Mycroft Holmes: Tabula Rasa
by Rector
Summary: A romance. Accident, absence, amnesia and the Auvergne. The race to find a lost love. A Cate and Mycroft story.
1. Chapter 1

**Acknowledgements:**

This is a non-profit homage based upon characterisations developed by Messrs. Moffat, Gatiss and Thompson for the BBC series _Sherlock_. The character of Mycroft has been brought to life through the acting skills of Mr Gatiss. No transgression of copyright or licence is intended.

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**Note:**

This narrative is ninth in a series. Your enjoyment of this story will likely be enhanced if you read the sequence in chronological order:

**The Education of Mycroft Holmes**

**Cate and Mycroft: The Wedding**

**Mycroft Holmes: A Terminal Degree**

**Mycroft Holmes and the Trivium Protocol**

**Mycroft Holmes in Excelsis**

**The Double-First of Mycroft Holmes**

**Mycroft Holmes: Master of Secrets**

**The Sabbatical of Mycroft Holmes**

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**Mycroft Holmes: Tabula Rasa**

**Chapter One**

_How the Mighty Fall – A New Leaf – Sibling Differences – Exceptional Wickedness – A Quiet Dinner – A Perfect Moment – Don't Change a Thing – An Old Friend._

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_Eight years ago_.

"_I'll see you in hell, Holmes, you arrogant fucking bastard!"_

Mycroft Holmes stood silent and unmoved at the sight of Jonathan Shaw being dragged unsympathetically from his own court-martial, the man's handsome face twisted with fury. It had been a sordid affair: senior army officer, a Major and Company Commander in the RAMC, caught in a black market antibiotics sting operation. Not only had this individual put the lives of British service personnel at risk by significantly reducing the level of dependable pharmaceuticals in the field, but he had even defrauded his desperate customers by padding out unfillable orders with placebos of little more than chalk and salt.

Had the operation remained small-scale, it might never have been noticed, never become a blip in the smooth line of events that crossed a certain desk in a certain shrouded government department.

But Shaw was an innately greedy man: what was once enough quickly became insufficient as his appetites grew ever more excessive. Even this state of affairs might not have proven impossible to manage, had his ability to procure increasing supplies and control the technical concealment of such expanded operations been as effective as he imagined it to be. The entire scheme ultimately collapsed beneath the weight of its own iniquity.

Normally avoiding personal contact, the revelation of the lengths to which Shaw had gone in order to hide his corrupt activities gave Mycroft an unusually strong desire to see the man receive justice. It was unfortunate that Shaw's Silk had dealt with Mycroft's department before and thus recognised him on sight in the courtroom. The name _Holmes_ and the implication of his presence at the trial did not remain a secret from Shaw for long.

The man's natural charm and affability was already swaying several of the seven-member Board but such attributes were lost on the cool and dispassionate philosophy of an adversary such as the elder Holmes. When the presiding Judge Advocate slid his eyes in Mycroft's direction, the most fractional shake of his head was all it took to assure the required verdict.

Major Jonathan Shaw had been caught, court-martialled, convicted and condemned. He was going to be in gaol for a long time.

And Mycroft Holmes had put him there.

###

_Present day._

Cate found herself perched on a plain wooden chair in the centre of a large room waiting for someone to punch her.

She knew she was being watched, that there were many eyes on her, but pushed the knowledge to one side as she made herself _focus_. Whatever else happened in the next few minutes, she _had_ to stay where she was regardless of events and she had a pretty good idea that what was about to happen wasn't going to be good.

The main problem with being forced to sit still as you waited to be attacked was that, no matter how hard one tried, it was not possible to see behind one's own head. And if sight could not be relied upon for safety, then its presence was nothing more than an _illusion_ of safety. Either she was able to trust her other senses or she wasn't. Taking a deep breath, she sat straighter in the chair and closed her eyes.

The silence around her was complete. Not a waft of air to reveal movement; no heat or cold to suggest sunlight or shade, even the floor was padded so that no footstep might be revealed before it was impossible to avoid.

Cate waited; her heartbeat on the slow side of regular, a kind of meditative flow in her mind as she felt the ambient temperature of the air with her skin, the scent and restlessness of the slight drafts that brushed at her.

The first faint hint of disturbance came from her right. _Of course_. They knew she was left-handed, so assumed the right would be a weakness. _Foolish_. As if she hadn't already absorbed the knowledge and taken steps months and months ago to rectify any potential vulnerability. Tempted though she was to smile, Cate maintained a smooth and even expression on her face though her heart started to race.

_It was beginning_.

Within the space of three seconds, Cate felt a separate, stronger, pulse of air, as if a hand or foot had just been moved from one place to another.

Her eyes flicked open and forward as she watched for any hint of movement, even for the faintest of shadows upon the ground.

Instantly, the first attacker was at her right quarter, just as she had anticipated. Allowing him to get within a hand's-breadth of her head, her right forearm lashed out to block from below, while her left hand grabbed from above in a simultaneous and vicious wristlock, forcing her opponent to groan and falter in his attack. Following a swift elbow jab to his throat, the man staggered away, falling to the floor.

At almost the same moment, Cate felt a second slice of fast air coming from her left, this time from someone standing somewhat to her side and behind. Swivelling in the seat and arching violently backwards, Cate thrust out both legs in an advanced double-kick defence, a thrill of triumph spiking in her chest as she saw the man stagger away, soundless, but not uninjured.

Resuming her forward-facing stance, Cate regulated her breathing as best she could, waiting for the next attack: it was bound to be soon.

Almost as the thought formed, she heard the dull grunt of the second assailant directly behind her. Leaning swiftly forward into a lung-crushing crouch, Cate felt the air rush over her skull close enough to make her hair crackle with static. In the next instant, she flung herself backwards, tipping the wooden chair over at such speed that she remained connected to it, but with her legs free and already twisting backwards in order to kick and maim. By bending herself virtually in half, Cate managed to twist her feet around the ankle of the man behind her and yank massively, flipping him over onto his back.

He raised himself immediately back to the vertical but moved away from her apparently impenetrable defence.

Cate made a face, as much as she could, given that she was currently flat on her back in a wooden chair. Taking a huge breath and holding the sides of the wooden seat, she flung her body upright, bringing the chair with her so that she returned to her initial position, facing forwards.

It would be only seconds before the final attacker closed for an emphatic and no doubt deadly assault, but all she could do now was wait and react; this was the endgame and there would be no quarter or respite. Cate swallowed in a parched throat and waited with every molecule of her body.

The onslaught, when it came, was once more from her right. The man behind her had opted for a side-kick, but again, she managed to throw herself and the chair fractionally to one side, flinching as the air whistled past her ear.

Had the blow connected, she would have been unconscious, probably for some time and possibly even seriously hurt. This guy wasn't playing any more, a fact which hiked Cate's awareness up a couple of notches as the adrenaline response flowed into her blood.

The very next second she felt the thud as the man landed directly in front of her, his action morphing from an eye-blurring spin into a flying kick aimed directly at her from the front. Such a powerful and virtually indefensible move was only made when the target was judged unable to avoid the strike. If there had been time, she would have smiled.

Throwing herself onto her back once again, Cate allowed her legs and feet to strike upwards as the man simply misjudged her location and was about to fly directly over her supine body.

One swift upward thrust with her right foot and it was all over. The man fell to the mat, gasping and holding his side. Cate's lungs sucked down frantic breaths as the sweat on her brow ran stinging into her eyes. It was over. She had done it. She had completed the final test. Feeling weak and limp, she tried to calm the air struggling into her lungs knowing she couldn't simply lie there no matter how temporarily attractive the idea.

Flinging herself and her chair into an upright position one final time, she dragged down a massive breath. With legs that were suddenly more wobble than walk, she stood and looked at the short Korean man strolling towards her.

Master Kwan was less than eight feet away, on the edge of the matted area. He must have been close by the entire time. Just in case.

And behind him, in the first row of spectator's seating, almost directly behind the table of judges, she found a pair of brilliant blue eyes, eyes that fixed on hers and held her motionless in the room as nothing else could.

"You were very skilful, my dear Cate," Kwan smiled openly. "You have worked hard for your black belt and made an old man proud."

Bowing low, Cate's face was one huge grin as she stood straight. Unable to stop herself, she threw her arms around the ancient Korean, kissing him on the cheek.

"Did I do it,_ Sabom-nim_? Will I pass?"

"Against three opponents from a seated position?" Kwan grinned. "I would have passed you months ago, but we must be seen by everyone to be following the rules," he took her hand and turned to stare at the judges who were still debating over pieces of paper. Until they announced their final decision, everything was up in the air. He felt Cate take a deep breath.

They would not dare deny her, Kwan was positive. If they decided not to give this woman the award to which she had been progressing for the last two years, he would return to Korea where some logic still prevailed.

But he much preferred the British climate and so he held his breath too.

The three judges had their heads together for what seemed an inordinate amount of time, but which, in reality, was no more than a minute.

The senior adjudicator in the centre stood, his face neutral and unsmiling. Cate felt her stomach sink. She'd botched it. All that work. All those bruises.

Kwan's fingers squeezed hers just as the judge started to smile.

"According to the rules and statutes of the British Hapkido Association," the man began. "We are pleased to announce that you have successfully attained the level of…" the remaining words were drowned by the applause that erupted in the small _dojang_, with some onlookers eventually standing as they clapped. Kwan walked to the adjudicators' table

Cate wondered if her heart was going to explode as she bowed to the audience, even more when she caught Mycroft's somewhat intense expression. Though he was the last person to celebrate openly in public, she thought he looked pleased.

Kwan returned, carrying a folded belt of heavy black material.

###

He held her hand tight all the way home in the Jaguar. Other than a very quiet "_Congratulations, Darling_," no words had been spoken between them. Cate didn't mind; she was too full of the afternoon's events to say anything and stared out of the window in a slight daze. It wasn't until Mycroft had opened her door with a strange smile on his face that she even realised they'd arrive back at the townhouse.

"Sorry ... miles away," she lifted her eyebrows and shook her head, rolling her eyes at her own inattention.

Opening the heavy front-door, Cate was about to head up to their bedroom for a much-needed shower when she felt herself pulled resolutely into the front lounge and into a pair of extremely close-fitting arms. There wasn't even time for a surprised gasp, as her mouth was suddenly very involved with Mycroft's as he kissed her with an ardency that bordered on the turbulent.

Nor, apparently, was he in any mood to rush, as the kiss extended and softened and the embrace grew gentle and easy.

"You are incredible," he murmured when they eventually parted, his eyes dazzling with indulgence and triumph. "You can have no idea how immeasurably smug I feel because of you. You were amazing this afternoon, simply outstanding."

"You weren't worried I might get hurt?" Cate grinned up at him, still wrapped in his arms. "Normally you're flapping the second I land a bruise."

"I am learning to moderate my concern a little better these days," he smiled, resting his forehead against hers. "Besides, now you're a _bone fide_ expert," he hugged her a little tighter. "Excessive concern seems a trifle uninformed."

"It is," Cate stretched up for another kiss. "But that's never stopped you before."

"I have turned over an entirely new leaf," he said, smiling down at her with unashamed satisfaction. "And to celebrate your success and my new enlightenment, tomorrow night I am going to take you out to dinner and the opera; a little treat."

"How lovely," Cate smiled again, then frowned. "But what's on that I haven't heard about?" she said, mentally cataloguing what was showing in the West End. There were no new performances or concerts: she would have known.

"I think a little Bizet and a quiet dinner and perhaps a night in a cosy hotel away from the children?" Mycroft brought her close in the shelter of his arms again. Cate might be an acknowledged martial-arts authority now, but she was still his wife and he'd be damned if he'd give up the notion he could keep her safe and protected and a little pampered.

"There's a new Bizet playing ?" she was puzzled. "Where? I thought I knew all the current London opera."

"Who said it was in London?" Mycroft smiled again, gratified by her sudden look of delight.

###

"My sister is coming down to London in any case and has been dying to meet the children since they were born," Nora Compton was sitting in the townhouse kitchen, drinking tea. "It's not as if they're tiny babies anymore and can't be parted from their mother for a few days," she added, considering the slice of chocolate cake on her plate. "I'd be thrilled to have them to myself for the weekend, and Sally will too," she said, nodding. "I'll just have to make sure Jules doesn't have his own way all the time and that Blythe doesn't get into the DVDs again."

Cate looked at the older woman and raised a single eyebrow.

The twins were heading towards four years old although a stranger might be forgiven for considering them significantly older. Both were reading now; their conversation modifying almost daily as new vocabulary danced through their minds and into their questions.

Julius was becoming a handsome-looking child, with dark wavy hair and wide hazel eyes. He had Nanny Nora entranced from the first time he said her name, and had progressively won over every inhabitant of the university crèche, even the mothers. His voice was usually soft with laughter and though the boy was mildness itself, there had been a few occasions where an impulsive, though brief-lived temper drew his features into a pronounced scowl.

Cate made quite sure that neither her son's wide-eyed-gaze, nor his frowning sulks won him unfair advantage over his sister, although her daughter was already far too canny to allow her brother any escape from fraternal retribution if she felt he had done her wrong.

Blythe was increasingly her father's daughter. Had there ever been any doubt as to her sire, one only needed to meet her cobalt-blue gaze and wait as she absorbed everything she saw. Like her twin, Blythe's hair was a dark wavy mass that bounced around her head in tangled ringlets and refused to observe any form of compliance. Her face was shaped like Cate's, as were the fine dark eyebrows which curved endlessly in question. Julius had worn the same dark quiff as his father since birth and beneath the curves of infancy, his face already hinted at the refined bone-structure of his uncle.

Blythe was, on the whole, the more introspective sibling and though her laughter was the same as her brother's and filled whatever room she inhabited, she tended to be the more thoughtful of the pair. Where Jules was reactive and spontaneous, Blythe was reflective and deliberate. Where her brother occasionally threw a black tantrum, when Blythe was upset, she went very quiet. And she plotted.

It had been quite an experience several weeks ago when they had watched Blythe's reaction to the semi-accidental destruction of her favourite Lego castle; one that had taken her an entire week to build. The child had not screamed at her brother or even made a fuss, but had looked unhappy and walked away.

Realising he had done something very bad and that his sister was really upset, Jules was at a loss what to do about it. So he did nothing and like most little boys, soon forgot the transgression.

It was only when Blythe returned and gave him a small box that Cate and Mycroft gained an insight into their daughter's thinking.

The box contained the wheels of every single one of Jules' model car collection. Dozens of them, all mixed up together. Not broken beyond repair, but the replacement of which would take Jules at least several days.

About the same time it would take her to rebuild the castle.

Thus when Nora assured her that a weekend alone with the twins was something to be happily anticipated, Cate was momentarily pensive. Yet if there were anyone who understood the children as well as she and Mycroft, it would be Nora Compton. So it was agreed: Mycroft and Cate would spend the weekend away, the first time since the twins' birth that both parents would be simultaneously absent.

"So you must be very good for Nanny Nora," Cate told them that night as she combed out their hair, bath-damp and curling. "Daddy and I do not want to hear about any upsets when we come back."

"Will there be presents when you come back?" Jules turned beneath her hands and smiled agreeably. Sometimes there were presents; it was worth a try.

"Daddy is keeping everything secret," Cate smiled and dropped her voice to a secretive whisper. "So I don't know if there will be presents or not," she added. "In any case, you shouldn't expect presents just for being good, that's not how presents work."

"Presents is for when you're happy, isn't it, Mummy?" Blythe picked up the comb her mother had just put down and began tugging it through her messy curls. "_Ow_."

"Presents are for special times such as Christmas and for your birthdays," Cate nodded, reclaiming the comb and holding Blythe's head still with one hand while the other untangled the knots. She smiled. "But there _might_ be presents."

"I shall be _very_ good, Mummy," Jules grinned, his little face knowingly angelic.

Cate sighed internally. Nora had better stay on her toes.

###

"But how do I know what to pack if you aren't going to tell me where we're going?" Cate put her hands on her hips and raised her eyebrows, exasperated. "Are we going to be anywhere else apart from some unknown city? Do I need to pack walking shoes and a jacket or not? I need to know, Mycroft, or I'll not have the right things to wear."

Emerging from the dressing-room tying his tie and with a faint curve to his mouth, the elder Holmes walked to his wife and encased her in his arms.

"Take your evening clothes and nothing else," he smiled, pressing his face against the warm skin of her neck.

"If I do that, I'll be stuck in the hotel all weekend," Cate frowned, unappeased. Mycroft smiled even more as he observed once again the shared mannerisms of his wife and their son.

"And what's wrong with staying in the hotel room for the weekend?" his voice was velvet sin in her ear as his arms tightened around her waist.

"Is that your fiendish scheme?" Cate relaxed against him and grinned. "To take me somewhere foreign and exotic and seduce me in a strange hotel?"

"Yes," Mycroft turned her in his arms, smiling down into laughing brown eyes. "It is," he agreed, nibbling along her jaw. "How does that sound to you?"

"Sounds wonderful," Cate closed her eyes and melted into his chest as his mouth caressed her with intimate promises of exceptional wickedness.

###

The Jaguar arrived at three in the afternoon to take them and their bags to the airport. Cate had decided to take a few additional pieces of clothing on the off-chance that they did, in fact, decide to leave the hotel, wherever it was, to go for a walk. It might even happen.

Taking them to the City Airport, the first of Mycroft's surprises waited in the form of a shiny white private Cessna.

"You realise I might get used to this First-class treatment?" Cate smiled at the nice uniformed man who took their bags and loaded them onto the sleek craft. "I may never want to fly commercial again."

"Would you like me to buy you a jet?" Mycroft slid a long arm around her shoulders.

Cate stopped in her tracks. "You're joking," she said, wanting to be certain he _was_ joking. He had a habit of doing the unexpected when the fancy took him.

"Am I?" Mycroft tucked her hand in the crook of his arm and walked towards the small aeroplane.

"I have no need of a jet, my love," Cate allowed herself to be escorted to the Cessna.

"Are you sure?" Mycroft sounded perfectly reasonable. "Not even a small one?"

"Not even the smallest," Cate shook her head, smiling.

"You never let me buy you anything," he grumbled mildly as he handed her up the steps into the main cabin.

And indeed, Cate knew she would miss this the next time she flew, even if she went First class, as the opulent ivory-pale leather and glossy interior beckoned them inside.

Everything was lush and over-the-top luxury, from the fabulously polished hardwoods that bedecked every solid surface, to the excessively generous seating that wrapped around her body as she sat. The carpeting, a rich dark green, was probably thick enough to sleep on. It even _smelled_ expensive. Cate sat and enjoyed the decadence.

"Good afternoon, Professor and Mr Holmes," the amiable man who'd managed their bags was back in the cabin. "My name is Rajesh Marin and I'll be your steward on this trip. We won't be airborne for very long, but if there's anything I might get you before we take-off?"

"Thank you, Rajesh," Cate looked slyly across at her husband. "Where exactly are we landing?"

Mycroft's discreet cough attracted the man's attention, and the expression on his face did the rest.

"Unfortunately, Madam," Rajesh developed a profoundly sorrowful look as he offered her a flute of bubbling wine. "Despite the fact that I am the co-pilot, I appear to have entirely forgotten our destination. I do apologise. Champagne?"

"Champagne would be lovely, thank you," accepting the glass, Cate sank back into her enveloping seat, her eyes on Mycroft's face. He returned her gaze innocently but with an air of amusement.

"You _know_ how much not knowing things drives me bonkers, don't you?" her features were controlled, but her soft words hinted otherwise.

"I am well aware of your hyper-active curiosity," Mycroft crossed his legs and toasted her with his own glass, a small but satisfied smile sculpting his mouth. It wasn't often that he had her at such a disadvantage and he fully intended to make the most of it.

"And you _know_ how I react when you behave in such an abominable fashion, don't you?" Cate started to smile as well. A wide smile with slightly telling undertones.

"My love, I know everything about you," Mycroft sipped his wine, a quiet elation flowing through his veins at her unaffected merriment.

"Then you also know that I will exact a full and merciless retribution for such appalling treatment, don't you?"

"I'm rather counting on it," Mycroft indulged his own anticipation as he smiled into his champagne. This promised to be a memorable weekend.

"The crew are sworn to secrecy on pain of death?" Cate murmured, accepting a refill of her flute of chilly fizz and sipping thoughtfully. It was very good champagne. She might allow herself to become a little giddy.

"You've been writing too many spy-novels," straight-faced, Mycroft made himself comfortable in the chair opposite and looked at her over the rim of his glass, his smile invisible now, but his amusement very much present.

They lifted-off with very little motion or noise and were quickly above the clouds and in the brilliant late-afternoon sunshine.

"If I guess correctly where we're going, will you tell me?" Cate's curiosity was becoming a thing of tangible discomfort.

"Not a chance," Mycroft said. "Give me your foot," he added, holding out his right hand and beckoning with his fingers.

Without a word, Cate lifted up her nearest leg and slid her ankle into his warm grasp. Pulling her shoe off and resting her heel on his knee, Mycroft began to massage the sole and arch of her foot, a smile crinkling his mouth as she groaned decadently, sliding lower in the chair and closing her eyes in bliss. With luck, he could keep her occupied until they landed.

It wouldn't be long.

###

"I adore Paris," Cate's smile was luminous as she stepped out onto the tarmac of Orly Airport, a brief cab-ride from the heart of the city. "Next to London, it's one of my favourite places."

"Told you I knew everything about you," Mycroft hugged Cate to his side, pleased to have this time alone with her; delighted to be able to amuse the woman who was the anchor of his life.

"And this cosy hotel you've booked?" she leaned against him, unwilling to lose the marvellous light-hearted sense of camaraderie. It had been a while since they had been able to behave so freely with one another.

"Just a simple Parisian bed-and-breakfast," Mycroft laced his fingers through hers as the cab drove around _la Place de la Porte Mallot_ and turning into _l'Avenue de la Grande Armée_, the Arc de Triomphe clearly visible.

"Simple bed-and-breakfast?"

Mycroft squeezed her fingers a little harder and smiled, looking out at the deepening sunset in the French capital.

It was only when the car turned smoothly into the _Champs-Elysées_, that Cate experienced a sneaking suspicion. "Bed-and-breakfast?"

"Quality is, at its heart, a simple thing, don't you think?" Mycroft's smile was lofty as they pulled into the manicured forecourt of the _George Cinq_.

"This is the most expensive hotel in the entire city," Cate laughed. "I've never dared to imagine staying here; it's far too rich for my purse."

"Then it's about time you allow me to treat you as I wish," Mycroft stopped, gazing down into her entranced face. "You never do, you know."

Cate was hardly paying attention as she took in the sights and sounds and atmosphere of one of the most famous hotels in the entire Western world.

"Holmes; the English Suite," he answered the _Réceptionniste_'s polite query.

"Mais, _bien_ _sûr_, Monsieur et Madame," the man behind the enormous marble desk smiled a charming, elegant smile, handed over a slim plastic card and rang for a porter to take their bags.

The suite was a fantasy, seven-roomed indulgence. Pink marble featured heavily, especially in the bathroom. The bathroom with the sunken bath, large enough to swim in, next to the bedroom with the four-poster bed that could sleep four. Six, if they were good friends.

"_My_ _God_, Mycroft," Cate wandered from room to room. "This is _incredible_."

"We have an early dinner booked, so best think about changing, darling," he said, unzipping a case and lifting out a stylish dinner suit.

"That's new," Cate cast her eyes over the refined creation. "It looks beautiful."

"An adjective reserved for the beautiful among us, my love," Mycroft dropped the suit on the bed crossing the room until he stood beside her, his arms suddenly close. "You are beautiful," he murmured, an abrupt intensity in his face. "_You_ are beautiful and I adore you."

She made herself breathe slowly as the sincerity of his emotion made her heart surge and brought unusual warmth to her face. "Darling Mycroft," Cate felt herself drowning in two vividly blue pools.

Reaching for her hand, he lifted her fingers to his lips and smiled against them, his gaze darkening as his eyelids slid lower. It was clear his thoughts had turned to matters other than the sartorial.

Cate knew that look. "You said a quiet dinner," she reminded him. "That would be somewhere quiet, yes?"

"_Maxime's_," Mycroft smiled as his lips found hers. "At six."

"Then I had better get changed," Cate clung to him, not making a move.

"Yes," Mycroft seemed lost in her kiss. "Go and change."

"I'll go and change, then," Cate floated in his embrace and his regard.

"Soon," he sounded breathless.

"Any second now," Cate hung in his arms, unwilling to leave this feeling, even for a moment.

"Go," Mycroft tightened his hold about her.

"Going," Cate curved against him, her hands threading up through his hair, pulling his mouth harder against hers and into a kiss that left them both giddy.

"Either you change now or we aren't going anywhere tonight," he hovered above her, tense with self-control.

"Spoilsport," Cate's soft laugh broke the spell.

Maxime's was as ostentatious as it ever was, the restaurant shining with the gloriously voluptuous grandeur of Pierre Cardin's _Art Nouveau_. It had been too long since they had dined there and over a fabulous meal Mycroft entertained them both with descriptions of their fellow diners.

"Bankrupt, lavishing his final cash on his favourite mistress," he blinked slowly at a nearby table. "Poor man doesn't realise she's already found someone to replace him."

"You can't possibly know that," Cate scoffed quietly. "You're making it up."

Saying nothing, he smiled enigmatically, before reaching into his jacket pocket and placing a tiny red box on the white linen of the table.

"I never make anything up," his mouth curved a little more at the corners as he pushed the box towards her with a finger. "Nothing important, that is," he added. "I love you."

As her heart started to thump again, Cate opened the box and felt her skin prickle.

A magnificent ring featuring an extraordinary square sapphire surrounded by brilliant white diamonds glinted up at her in the restaurant lights.

"You never let me buy you anything," he smiled reflectively. "So I decided to change that." Taking her right hand, Mycroft slid the ring onto the fourth finger. Naturally, it was an exact fit.

Lifting her hand until the diamonds reflected the multitude of lights around them; Cate stared in astonishment at the flawless central jewel. It was staggering.

"_Oh_," there were no words for this. Raising her eyes to his, Cate felt her smile go a little wobbly. "It's perfect."

For a moment, Mycroft experienced the urge to sweep Cate up in his arms and drag her back to the hotel. Her expression of speechless amazement was doing unimagined things to his libido. He cleared his throat.

"The first bell is at seven-thirty," he muttered, clearing his throat again. "We should make a move," he beckoned for the bill, signing with a slight flourish.

"Somewhere small and low-key, no doubt?" Cate smiled again as a waiter pulled out her chair.

"The _Palais Garnier_," Mycroft had the decency to look sheepish. "They're playing _La jolie fille de Perth_."

"One of my favourites," she said. "You really are spoiling me."

Ensuring the warmth of her hand was firmly within his as they walked towards the taxi, Mycroft was silent but his expression said everything.

###

It was quite late when they finally returned to their suite, after a post-opera sojourn to a little café where they dawdled over espresso and cognac. Hand-in-hand, they strolled through the dimly-lit _apartment_, silence between them. Mycroft was about to turn on the light when Cate stopped him.

"_Don't_," she said, her touch gentle on his arm. "Don't change anything; it's too wonderful tonight."

"Darling Cate," Mycroft turned back, looking down into her eyes glittering in the faint glow of the Parisian night.

"Take me to bed, Mycroft," she sighed as his arms reached out to her.

###

Deciding on a late breakfast in the hotel's _La Galerie_ rather than their own suite, Cate stared around at the opulent décor and the massive tapestries. It was hard to believe this was a hotel and not some famous French _chateau_. Even the people here looked important and she half-expected to see film-stars and notorious celebrities in dark glasses.

"Interesting," Mycroft's quiet observation made her turn towards him as he sat, sipping from his _demi-tasse_.

"What?" she was only mildly curious, her sense of well-being too profound to concern itself with energetic thinking this morning.

"French Foreign Minister over in the corner being unusually intimate with a lady," there was genuine amusement in his voice.

"And why is that so interesting?" Cate turned languidly in her chair, her eyes dreamy, her movement unhurried.

"Interesting because of her husband," he continued, savouring the coffee.

"Who is ..?"

"The Italian Foreign Minister," Mycroft allowed one side of his mouth to lift. "I foresee all manner of impassioned debate at the next Europarl summit."

"Who else can you see?" Cate cast her own eyes around the assembled duos and small family groups. One or two solitary souls; several couples like themselves, she smiled at that thought … a conversation between two men and a woman that was clearly a business chat, especially since the woman was demonstrating something to them on an iPad …

"_My God_," Cate sat bolt upright, staring. "Tallis Varon."

"Who?" Mycroft followed her gaze to the three people now gazing down at the piece of technology.

"_Tallis_ …" Cate stood, uncertain for a moment, then made up her mind. She walked across the luxuriantly carpeted room to the woman's side.

"Excuse me," she began. "I'm dreadfully sorry to interrupt your discussion, but I simply had to say …" she got no further.

"_Cate!_" the woman shrieked, leaping to her feet and throwing both arms around her neck, pulling the British woman into an extended hug. "Cate _Adin_ … after all this time; I can't believe it!"

Laughing as she pulled back to examine her old friend, Cate took in the tanned skin, the bright eyes and paint-stained fingernails of her university room-mate. It had been more than two decades since they had shared several of the most exciting years of their lives, running around Europe as undergrad Art and Lit students.

"Not Adin anymore," Cate lifted up her hand, wiggling the diamond ring. "Adin-Holmes, if you want to be formal about it, though my students call me Professor Holmes most of the time. They are terribly conservative young things, these days."

"Married? _Professor?_ My God, Cate, when did you become so establishment?"

Turning to her colleagues, Varon offered her apologies, but asked if they might break for the day and resume in the morning. Nodding and smiling, the men quickly left the two women alone.

"Come, meet my husband," Cate pulled Tallis by the hand across to their table, smiling at Mycroft as he stood, absorbing the stranger being ushered towards him.

The two women could easily be mistaken for sisters; approximately the same height and shape, both with dark hair, although Cate's was a little shorter; both athletically-built and of course, virtually identical in age.

"Tallis Varon, artist _extraordinaire_ and ex-Cambridge flatmate, my darling husband, Mycroft Holmes," Cate paused, turning a grinning face towards him. "Mycroft, one of my oldest and dearest friends whom I met at Cambridge and who got me into more trouble than I can remember, Tallis Varon."

"Miss Varon," Mycroft took her hand, shaking it carefully. "I hope your upcoming exhibit is successful."

"You know my work?" Tallis looked uncertain.

"Mycroft knows all sorts of things, Tally," Cate laughed, pulling her friend down onto a sofa. "He's a very special man."

"And what do you do, special husband of my old friend?" Tallis lifted her dark eyebrows and looked at him teasingly. "Since Cate swore she would never, _ever_ marry, I can only think you must be very special indeed to have tempted her away from the single life."

"I work for the British Government," he said, smiling. "Administration mostly," he added. "It can be somewhat pedestrian at times."

Varon looked assessingly at him, then back at Cate. "I don't believe a word of it," she laughed. "My Catherine would never fall in love with someone who moved only paper," she laughed again. "There is more here that you are telling me."

"That is a conversation for later," Cate held her friend's hand. "Tell me everything that's happened to you in the last twenty years," she demanded.

Mycroft's Blackberry rang. Checking the caller ID, he frowned, then stood. "Apologies, my love," he smiled at Cate. "This is a call I have to take. Shouldn't be long." Nodding affably at the newcomer, he walked away towards one of the room's large pillars, speaking quietly as he did.

"That doesn't sound like an administrator to me," Tallis grinned. "Who is he, really?"

"Tell me your story first," Cate repeated. "Then I'll tell you mine."

"University," Tallis began, ticking the events on her fingers. "Then a great deal of travel, then back to the Paris College of Art for postgrad work, then New York, then years and years of not selling any paintings and now, finally, doing quite well," she smiled. "Only took me twenty years to become an overnight success," she shook her head. "I have a new exhibit opening in a couple of weeks."

Mycroft returned to the table, a fateful glower on his face. Cate's heart sank; she recognised the expression.

"I'm so terribly sorry, darling," Mycroft reached for her hand and squeezed it apologetically. "There's an unexpected debacle in London at a level that apparently only I can accommodate," his mouth compressed. "I have to return very quickly; I'm so sorry."

"But you can't go _now_," staring at Cate, Tallis Varon's face was stricken. "We've only just met each other again after all these years, and we might not catch up again for _ages_, so you can't go just yet. Can you stay a little longer and return to London tonight, perhaps?" she looked desperate.

"Ms Varon is entirely correct, my sweet," Mycroft's expression lightened. "Stay here for as long as you wish and catch up; you can fly back when you feel like it: the suite is ours for another two days."

"That would be _fantastic_!" Tallis grinned wildly. "Stay here and come look at my paintings and we can catch up with everything; how would that be?" she asked, pleased.

"I could, I suppose …" Cate was thoughtful.

"Oh, _please_ say yes," her friend begged. "It's been so long since we've had a chance to talk and maybe have dinner together?"

"I have to leave for the airport within the next fifteen minutes, darling," Mycroft was conciliatory. "Spend the day with Ms Varon and return tomorrow; I'll see you then."

"Say _yes_," Tallis made an agonised face.

"Tomorrow will be fine, my love," Mycroft smiled.

Cate shrugged and smiled too. "Looks like I'm staying for another day, in that case," she looked happy.

"Wonderful!" Tallis clapped her hands. "I have to show you my paintings before the exhibit opens."

"And I have to leave now, my love. Can you organise the luggage?"

"I think I can manage a couple of bags, Mycroft," Cate stood and hugged him tight, brushing his mouth with her own. "I'll see you tomorrow," she murmured. "And you can continue spoiling me," she added in a whisper.

"I shall make the appropriate arrangements," Mycroft let his fingers caress her face once before he straightened up and, with a final apologetic glance, walked swiftly towards the exit. In a few seconds, he had gone. Cate was momentarily despondent: the weekend had been going so marvellously well.

"Oh well," she sighed. "Where are the paintings you wanted me to see?"

"Just outside of Vichy," Tallis laughed loud. "We need to catch the train to get there."

"_Vichy?_" Cate was surprised. "It'll take us hours to get there and back."

"Not on the TGV," Tallis grinned. "About than an hour each way, come on," she stood, beckoning. "I've only just bought _Narcisse_, an old farmhouse near _Saint-Yorre_ and had a new studio built. You _must_ come and see. _Please?_"

In the face of her friend's impassioned insistence, Cate grinned and allowed herself to be dragged out of the hotel once she had collected her bag and a coat. A cab presented itself at the hotel entrance and within minutes, the women were heading for the _Gare de Lyon_ and the high-speed train to points south.

The _Train à Grande Vitesse_ is an entirely ballistic, missile-shaped piece of engineering, designed to hurl itself at great speed over long distances. The interior of the train more closely resembles that of a modern passenger jet than a conventional train; sleek lines and pale contrasts, especially in the first carriage La Prèmier Classe, directly behind the leading power car.

Settling themselves either side of a small table, Cate and Tallis ordered coffees and began the long catch-up process as the train emerged from the station and quickly achieved its cruising-speed of just over two-hundred-and-ninety kilometres per hour. The scenery beyond Paris began to fly past at an exhilarating pace.

Cate noticed they had just zoomed through Château-Landon when she felt a heavy tremor shiver through the train, but thought little more of it. They were travelling so swiftly, it vanished as soon as it occurred.

"But what beautiful rings you have," Tallis exclaimed as Cate put her empty cup back on the table. "Your husband is a most generous man to buy you such things … let me see, please," she held her hands out for Cate's fingers, exclaiming even more as she enjoyed a closer look. "They are stupendous, _magnifique_," she murmured, a pleading light entering her eyes. "May I try them on?" she asked. "Would you mind terribly?"

"Of course I don't mind," Cate laughed, sliding both her diamond wedding ring as well the brilliant sapphire from her fingers and watched with great pleasure as Tallis slid them onto her own slim digits.

"So _beautiful_," the Frenchwoman breathed, admiring the sparkling diamonds on her hands in the sunlight. "I think I would do almost anything for jewels such as these," she laughed. "I'd even be prepared to …"

What Tallis Varon might have been willing to do would never be known as at that precise moment the 10.30am TGV ultra-fast train from Paris to Vichy left the tracks, derailing into an explosive mass of twisted steel and burning power couplings, leading to catastrophic failure of the transmission assembly.

The First-class carriages, so close to the initial explosion, were almost entirely destroyed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

_First Awakening – First News – Begin With the Living – Check and Validate – Message from France – The Only Witnesses – After Midnight in Nevers – Second Awakening – An Unremarkable Night._

#

#

_Pain_. Acute, terrible pain. Everywhere. And noise and fire and smoke. _Pain_. Screams, intermittent and at different distances; screams and shouting and fire and heat and smoke. _Darkness_.

She managed to open her eyes, eyelids caked closed with something sticky and heavy. _Pain_. She focused on a metal wall only inches from her face; saw the rounded heads of the rivets holding it together, held it at an angle in front of her. _Pain and pain_.

Not a normal angle. Not a vertical angle. She moved her eyes along the metal wall, looking for an edge, an end, but all she could see was an endless row of smooth rivet-heads.

She moved her head to see where she was _pain pain pain pain_. She stopped and closed her eyes again, concentrating instead on breathing.

A terrible smell of smoke and burning and … something else, something metallic, _organic_. She could smell blood. It was close by. She could smell death.

There was a loud explosion. She felt it shudder through the surface on which she lay at the same time it thundered in her ears. _Pain and pain_. The smoke thickened and the fire seemed either hotter or closer, but she didn't really care. There was nothing she could do except close her eyes.

More shouting. _Louder_. Closer. _Pain_. Another explosion, more heat, more smoke. The shouting was closer, coming closer, closer. _Pain_. Hard to breathe in the smoke. More pain everywhere.

A crashing sound of glass being wrenched away and cast down. Light, sudden daylight was reflecting off the metal wall by her face. Daylight or a torch. She didn't care.

"_Vite_! Il ya un autre ici!" _Quickly, there is another_ …

Things being moved around her. Heavy things being pulled clear. The stamp of boots close by.

"Pouvez-vous m'entendre? Pouvez-vous bouger?" _Could she hear them? Could she move?_

"_Aidez-moi_," she whispered, not wanting them to go without her. It was suddenly very important they not leave her here. "_Aidez-moi_," the effort made her cough_. Pain and pain and pain._

"_Nous avons un vivant, ici, m'aider à obtenir son sur une civière!_" They knew she was alive. They were getting her a stretcher. She didn't care. Didn't care about any of it. All she cared about was the pain. It was her entire world.

She felt hands moving her arms and legs and a feeling of being lifted as the pain rose up into a crescendo of agony so sharp and so unbearable that everything disappeared.

###

Mycroft's return to London had been swift and uneventful, the waiting Jaguar at City Airport taking him directly to his office. After handing him a dark red file, Anthea filled him in on the details of the drama demanding his presence.

"It's the Minister's younger son, this time," her lips tightened. "Which seems only fair considering the elder one has already had a run in the stupidity stakes."

"Witnesses? Recordings? Loitering paparazzi?" Mycroft was not in a benevolent mood.

"Other than those immediately connected to the boy, none that have been found, sir," Anthea revisited the rolling downloads on her phone in case new input might suggest otherwise. "Nothing _yet_, at any rate, although there were several other members of the public present who may have seen or heard something."

"Have MI5 do the usual trace and chase," he sighed, the corners of his mouth trending downward. _It was for some drunken teen's exposé of top-secret information in a seedy nightclub in order to impress his friends that he'd left Cate in Paris_. It would not do.

"Set up a meeting for me with the Minister and have Donald Parker ready to do his MI5 Director-General jeremiad, please," he sat, thoughtful, his fingertips resting on the polished sheen of his desk. "This situation has been tolerated for far too long and it ends today," he added. "Get me the PM, if you would."

Realising that a small Cabinet re-shuffle was about to be announced, probably in time to make the six o'clock news, Anthea made a mental note to sit on the several professional development applications from staff in her inbox; there would be precious little charity in the air this day.

"Anything else that I should know?" Mycroft felt a strong desire for tea.

Still scrolling down the endless snippets of data being fed directly to her Blackberry from a range of licit and illicit sources, Anthea frowned slightly.

"Switzerland has just offered amnesty and safe-passage for the latest political whistle-blower," she _tsked _softly. "Ireland has uncovered another bomb-plot and there's been a small collision between two riverboats on the Thames, no fatalities reported," she paused. "There's also a derailment in south-central France on the Paris to Lyon route," she added. "Initial word is that it's bad," she paused again, looking up at Mycroft. "Do you want statements of assistance and support sent to the appropriate agencies?"

"Yes; check with MI5 and MI6 in case they have any loose ends in the Auvergne that need an eye kept on them and watch the usual reports for British casualties, if you please, Anthea," Mycroft pressed a discreet intercom button. "Mark, could I have some tea, please?" he turned back to his desk. "Anything else?"

"PM's on line three for you, sir," Anthea nodded and walked to the door still reading the bulletins on the derailment.

_Just as well,_ she thought, _that Cate was safe in Paris_.

###

The _Sûreté nationale_ was a much-maligned service, where the hard-working constabulary and its officers were woefully underpaid, horrendously overworked and almost never properly appreciated, or so thought one Claude Auguste Moreau, Sergeant and much put-upon servant of the Fifth Republic. His medium-height, slightly overweight, slightly stooped form was currently smoking a forbidden Marlborough as he waited for his Lieutenant to finish a meeting in the Commandant's rooms.

There was visible movement in the office.

Flicking the cigarette out of the open window beside him, Moreau popped a peppermint into his mouth and stood, folding his arms. The only thing on everybody's mind right now was the train-wreck: how it had happened, why it had happened. The other problem was dealing with the identification of the dead and injured. So many bodies, so much damage.

Neither the explosions nor the resultant fire had been kind: there were bodies that might never be identified. The priests were already saying prayers for their passing.

Moreau thought a few for the living might not be such a bad idea either.

"We follow-up the passenger list and ensure we can match every name to a body, living or dead," Lieutenant Gilles de Chabot waved a hand through the air, wrinkling his nose at the acrid smell of cigarette smoke. "Thought you were giving up?" he muttered balefully, striding past the older man towards the door.

"So we start with the hospitals or the morgue?" Moreau popped a second peppermint onto his tongue.

De Chabot paused, thinking. "Some of the bodies are too badly burned to be easily determined," he scowled. "The medicos will be analysing those for any possible identification; dental records, implants, DNA," he said. "We begin with the living," he added, thrusting several sheets of paper towards his sergeant.

The pages were a printed list of names and seats, each seat showing its allocated place on the train. There were only two carriages depicted on the list.

"Why only two?" Moreau was confused. "There were at least eight carriages."

"We have the First-class passengers," Gilles' expression was sour.

Moreau sighed. His Lieutenant was constantly fighting his family name; the _de Chabots_ were one of the oldest families in the Auvergne, if not all of France, and he hated the notion of nobility with a grand passion. It was deeply ironic, almost funny, though it would not be wise to mock the man. He was icily unimpressed with his own bloodline.

Well into his forties, tall, brown-haired with a little grey now at the temples, Gilles de Chabot was, unfortunately for his _bourgeois_ aspirations, the visual epitome of Franco-European nobility, with an unfairly good-looking and somewhat leonine profile combined with a naturally unassailable bearing. He had been equally burdened by an appallingly good education and both his manner and speech screamed of noble birthright. No matter how hard de Chabot tried to be common, he was forever doomed to be an _aristo_.

This suited Moreau right down to the ground. If someone had to go to talk to people in nice first-class homes and drink nice first-class coffees, then he was happy for it to be him rather than anyone else. The more his inspector frowned about the inequalities of working with the upper-classes, the more Claude had to smile about.

"We have thirty-three names," de Chabot pursed his lips. "The passengers in the second carriage were mostly rescued before the fire got to them, so we're going to have the most trouble with the names in the carriage immediately following the main power car."

"How many names are there in that one?" Moreau lifted the first sheet over to see the diagram beneath.

"Twelve," Gilles looked bleak. "Twelve names and probably twelve bodies," he added. "The fire there was the worst of all."

"Then we should start at the hospital," Moreau was already walking towards the exit. "I'll get a car."

Nevers was not that large a town and with a slow-growing population of just over forty-thousand, the advent of the train crash had mobilised everyone who could offer some help or support – even the hotels were trying to accommodate family-members of the injured and traumatised who were already coming to be with loved ones unable to leave medical care.

The main City hospital was in the Avenue _Colbert_, a sprawling, modern mass, with buildings shooting off in different directions and specialist and out-patient clinics huddled around the central core of primary care.

They went directly to the main reception on the ground floor.

"Lieutenant de Chabot and Sergeant Moreau from the _Sûreté_," he displayed his badge of office. "We need to speak with the doctors dealing with victims from the TGV accident," he added, displaying the list of names and seating-diagram. "Specifically to do with anyone who may have been in the first two carriages."

"Monsieur Gerrard is the senior physician dealing with these cases," the Receptionist picked up a white phone. "I'll page him for you."

Waiting in a hospital was never one of de Chabot's favourite occupations; it was the smell more than anything else, he realised. There was no escaping it.

A short, older man with wiry grey hair and a little goatee bustled over from the _ascenseur_, a grim look clouding his expression.

"Gentlemen," Gerrard nodded briefly. "A bad situation, very bad."

"Yes," de Chabot set his lips into a tight line. "And we do not wish to make it worse for anyone, but there are things we need to know and we must start with those who may still be able to answer our questions. We will be as sensitive as we can, but we need answers, Doctor."

The older man frowned. "Some of the people brought to us will be dead before the day is out," he said. "They will not be able to tell you anything."

"Is there anyone here who is capable of talking?" Moreau handed over his copy of the list.

Gerrard scanned the names, making an unhappy face. "Two," he nodded. "Maybe."

"Then let us begin with those," de Chabot took a deep breath and indicated the lift. "Shall we?"

###

The rolling news on Anthea's phone was increasingly inundated by revelations of the growing tragedy that was the TGV derailment in France. More than twenty dead so far, with many of the bodies unrecognisable. The French Congress had already ordered a day of national mourning. European social-media platforms were going berserk.

Flipping over to her emails, she noticed an unusual message waiting in her general facility, the sender apparently the French government. It was probably something to do with the earlier formal communique of international support, but odd in that case, that a response had come through to her general mail and not one of the secured inboxes.

Opening the message, Anthea read the scant few lines of information and associated question with a growing sense of breathlessness. It was from the Sûreté.

_A credit card in the name of Catherine Adin-Homes had been used to purchase a First-class ticket on the Paris to Lyon TGV. The credit company had this email listed as primary contact for Professor Adin-Holmes' next-of-kin._

Anthea's heart pounded sickeningly loud in her ears. _Next-of-kin_. _Cate's next-of-kin._ She swallowed a sudden feeling of light-headed nausea down into her chest. This had to be checked. Checked and validated. There must have been a mistake. She would authenticate this immediately.

But first she'd ring Cate's phone to see if there was a simple explanation for all this: maybe her card had been stolen? Pressing the speed-dial, Anthea waited for the call to connect, only to find she was waiting … and waiting … not even a voice-mail message. Her mouth went dry.

Perhaps it would be best to go direct to the source of the query, in that case. Anthea pressed the keys and hit _call_.

###

_Pain, pain, pain_. Someone was crying out with the pain. Bright lights and the heavy cloying smell of antiseptic and hospital. A fractional sting somewhere on her body and blissful nothingness.

###

She had checked, carefully, with probing questions. Using the most powerful lines of communication, Anthea had gone directly to the heart of the company to ascertain the reason for them seeking Cate's family, her stomach an increasingly tight ball of horror.

It was an authentic query. A ticket had been purchased in Cate's name for passage on the derailed train, an accident that had so far claimed upwards of twenty lives and the company wanted to speak to Mycroft. She held the printed message loosely in her hand, unwilling to hasten the moment when he would see it, as if the grace of a few moments would make any difference.

He had finished his discussion with the PM – the Minister's uncontrollable offspring would no longer pose a threat to Britain's security and nor, apparently, would the Minister, but still she hesitated in sharing the information with him. She knew what this information would do.

"Anthea, a moment of your time please."

She closed her eyes briefly and forced herself to walk into his office, dreading the inevitable.

It took him all of two seconds. "What?" he said, his eyebrows lifting in concern before furrowing into a deep frown. "_What?_" he repeated, his voice a tone lower, a heart-beat slower.

A strange lassitude filled her and she sank into one of the seats this side of his desk.

He rose slowly from his chair, staring intently down at her frozen face. "What is it?" his whispered words sounded miles away. "_The children?_"

She shook her head, her throat too tight for words. _Not the children_. She handed him the printed request, her chest seizing with the knowledge of what was going to happen.

Mycroft found his mind at odds with the brief message. It was surely gibberish. It made no sense. Cate on a train? Why would she be on a train headed for Lyon? A train. The crashed train. Cate was on the train that crashed. The message from the credit company said nothing of her but only that they wanted to speak to him. His wife had been on a crashed French train and it was he with whom they wanted to speak. No no no …This couldn't be right. It couldn't possibly be right …

He sank back into his chair scarcely breathing, the paper clenched in his hand. He seemed composed, but his knuckles were ivory.

"Nevers," the word was strangely flat. "Arrange it, please."

"_Sir_," she swallowed, her throat as dry as the paper twisted in his fingers. In a distant part of her mind, she observed herself making travel arrangements in her usual competent and efficient manner. But it was as if she were watching someone else do it all … it wasn't her.

He was beside her desk, coat on, umbrella in hand.

"Say nothing," he murmured, "to anyone."

"_Sir_," she watched as he strode away, his body as rigid as glass.

###

"A family group to my right and there were two women several seats ahead," a grandmotherly type who had been in one of the seats close to the rear of the first carriage recalled. "The family sounded foreign, maybe Spanish or Portuguese, and the two women might have been sisters. I could hear them laughing and speaking French and they got on the train in Paris just as I did, so I assume that's where they came from," she added.

This witness was one of the very fortunate few, having escaped without major injury, just bruising and minor lacerations to her hands now swathed in thick white bandages. She waved them in the air.

"I don't remember much about it at all," the old woman continued. "One moment the train was travelling normally, the next it was twisting sideways and then everything went mad," her voice dropped to a shuddering whisper. "It was horrible. That poor family. Those poor women."

The second witness, a man, had not been so lucky and was still drowsy from the anaesthetic they had given him while they removed the lower part of his leg, crushed beyond hope of salvation.

Gerrard had reluctantly given them permission to speak with the patient for a minute, no longer.

"We are so very sorry to bother you, _Monsieur_," Gilles felt like a dog, disturbing this man who had already endured so much. "But do you remember if there was anyone else in the carriage with you just before the accident happened?"

"A woman behind me and a group just in front of me," his words were slow. "Two dark-haired women near the front," he whispered. "They were both very pretty and they were laughing," his voice fell to a whisper. "Did they all make it out?"

"We do not know yet," Moreau spoke quietly. "There is a chance some did."

"I hope to God they lived," the man slowly closed his eyes and faded into unconsciousness.

"_Enough_," Gerrard ushered them away. "There is nobody else on your list at this hospital."

"Nobody?" de Chabot looked confused. "Then where are the others?"

"In the morgue," Gerrard looked sour.

"There were only two survivors from the front carriage?" Moreau was more shocked than he realised.

"All the survivors were brought here for treatment," Gerrard explained, as if to a child. "These are the only two still alive."

"_My God_," the sergeant crossed himself.

"God had nothing to do with this," the elderly doctor ran a hand across his bloodshot eyes. "Now please leave," he said. "It has been more than twenty-four hours since I slept last and I'm not as young as I was. Please go."

"We may have to return with further questions for the two survivors at some point," de Chabot looked pained.

Leaving the hospital, Moreau lit up a cigarette and turned to his compatriot. "Do you think the two women made it?"

"Almost certainly not," Gilles de Chabot had a sudden craving for a cigarette. "Now we go and talk to the dead."

###

It was after midnight when Mycroft stepped down from the French army Aérospatiale Gazelle helicopter that had ferried him from Orly Airport. He had been on the move for fifteen hours since he left Paris the first time that morning, but no perception of tiredness was able to lessen his sense of urgency. He needed to find out what was at the bottom of this and if it meant that neither he nor the officers of the local Sûreté got any sleep, then so be it.

Though the passage from Whitehall to Fourchambault Airport just west of Nevers was undeniably swift, Mycroft had used the time to contact certain people both in the field and in the Directorate of Interior Intelligence. A dark Mercedes waited for him at the largest helicopter bay to one side of the main runway.

"Monsieur Holmes," a stick-thin man with the air of a hawk was waiting. "I am Commandant Batiste LeFèvre of the _Office de La Sûreté_ _Nationale_," he said. "I was told to get out of my bed and meet you here regardless of when you arrived," he breathed deeply, unused to such _dictats_ from his political masters. "This tells me you are a man of importance and not here to sight-see," he concluded. "What do you want?"

Mycroft looked down at the polish of his shoes for a moment before inhaling slowly. "My wife may have been a passenger on the train, in the First-class section," he said quietly. "I want details."

LeFèvre's expression turned bleak. "That is terrible," he said, shaking his head. "Dreadful. Please come with me," he added, re-entering the car.

The drive to Nevers, four kilometres from the airport, took only minutes. Pulling up besides an historic-looking white-painted building, Mycroft followed the older Frenchman inside.

Though it was late, the place was as busy as if it had been the middle of the day, not the middle of the night. There were police-officers everywhere: at their desks, on phones, talking quietly in small groups.

LeFèvre walked into a small, glass-walled office where two men were hunched over a diagram of some kind. The stood up and straightened as the saw LeFèvre.

"Monsieur Holmes," he paused, turning to his men. "Lieutenant Gilles de Chabot and Sergeant Claude Moreau," he announced by way of introduction. "Two of my best officers tasked with the brief of uncovering events in the area of the train where your wife may have been," he added, softly.

"Your wife was in _le Premier classe_?" de Chabot stood, assessing the well-dressed and clearly important stranger.

"It is possible," Mycroft's voice was as emotionless as his expression. "What facts do you have?"

"_Monsieur_," Claude Moreau lifted his hands in explanation. "We are still investigating the scene: we do not yet have the entire picture."

"Then tell me what you do have, please," the Englishman's clipped words advising the sergeant not to attempt obstruction at this juncture.

Rubbing tiredness from his face with both hands, Gilles leaned against the edge of his desk and sighed.

"Of the entire First-class section and out of thirty-three passengers in the first two carriages, there are twenty-three known survivors," his words were succinct. "What is your wife's name?"

"The card which purchased the ticket was in the name of Catherine Adin-Holmes," Mycroft was equally terse. "I assume that would be the name she would have been booked under if she was only the train."

The moment he said her name, the atmosphere in the room changed; whether it was some fractional alteration of the officers' stance, or the micro-expressions on the sergeant's features, Mycroft wasn't entirely sure. But they knew Cate's name.

"Monsieur," Moreau shook his head. "We still have leads to follow up and witnesses to question; not everything is yet known."

"You are avoiding telling me my wife was on the train and that she is among the missing," Mycroft's voice was ice.

There was utter silence in the room. LeFèvre met de Chabot's eyes. The Commandant gave an almost imperceptible nod.

"Not among the missing, Monsieur," the lieutenant muttered wearily, opening a drawer in his desk and pulling out a small transparent bag.

"Do you recognise these?" he asked, as gently as possible under the circumstances.

Mycroft knew what he would see even before he looked.

There were two rings in the bag: an elegant _Art Deco_ diamond platinum affair and a magnificent square sapphire. Cate's rings. He knew them as well as anyone: he had put them on her fingers himself.

His world twisted. There was no air in his chest.

"I wish to see the body," there was a chilling intensity behind his words.

"Not a good idea, Monsieur," de Chabot shook his head. "Most of the bodies were … there is little to see in some cases," he finished awkwardly. "The fire was intense."

"My wife's body," Mycroft was unmoved. "Where is it?"

"The hospital morgue," Moreau sighed.

"Take me there now."

###

Nausea and pain, but dulled and aching now rather than acid-blade-sharp.

_Thirst_. Such incredible _thirst_. "L'eau," she begged. _Water_.

A cool hand was at her forehead and then feeding a slender straw between her lips.

"_Boire lentement_," a woman's voice above her. "Drink slowly," the nurse repeated "Just take little sips, there's no rush. I'm not going anywhere."

"Thank you," she said, the words easy from her mouth. At least she was able to speak.

"Can you tell me your name, my dear?" the nurse smoothed hair away from the woman's face, fine dark hair that clung to the skin even though the blood and dirt had long since been removed. "We need to contact your family. Where do you live?"

Live? _Family?_ Where there should have been a map of names and places, of people and relationships, of history and present … there was … _nothing_. An enormous, cavernous empty space like a gigantic empty warehouse. Faint lines on the floor where important things might have stood, where partitions had been, marks, perhaps, of major events in her life but there was nothing there now. The building was empty; hollow and echoing and terrifyingly desolate.

"I can't remember; I don't know," she whispered. _Je ne c'est pas_.

The nurse in the gleaming white uniform patted her gently on the arm. "Don't worry," she said easily. "It'll probably come back to you when the shock wears off a little. Don't panic; the police will be looking into it in any case. Rest. Try and sleep. Do you need anything for the pain?"

It blossomed back up into her body with the reminder. Bone-deep and aching. "Why does everything hurt?" she asked. "What happened? Where am I?" she noticed the subdued lighting. "What time is it?"

"It's after midnight," the nurse advised. "You're in Nevers, about half-way between Paris and Lyon," she used her most solicitous voice. "You're in a private room of Colbert Hospital, just down the road from the main City hospital. There was a train accident," the nurse sounded very careful as she watched her patient. "There were some explosions and a fire and … several deaths," she added, as tactfully as she could. Who know if any of the dead were connected to the woman lying in the bed? "You can't remember anything at all about it?"

The woman relaxed back against the cool of the pillows and closed her eyes, thinking as hard as she could. But there was nothing there. Just the echoing empty space. She blinked slowly. "Nothing," she said wearily. "Not a single thing."

"I'll go and tell the doctor you're able to talk; he might be able to give you some information that will help." The nurse left on silent feet.

She closed her eyes and dozed until a young man in the inevitable white coat walked into the room. He smiled politely as he took in her relatively alert status. "Hello," he said. "I'm Doctor Noel Thibert and I've been looking after you since you came in yesterday," he said. "Feeling a little better?" he raised his eyebrows. "Want some water?"

She sipped with the straw. "The pain is better than it was," she croaked. "Though I feel horrible," she squeezed her eyes shut as another wave of nausea made her head spin. "Sick and everything aches. What happened?"

"The nurse told you there was a train-accident?" the young doctor confirmed. "It was quite bad with multiple casualties, including yourself."

"Apart from feeling horrible, what is wrong with me?" she asked, hoping it wasn't going to be too terrifying.

Assessing his patient to ensure she was up to the news, Thibert sat in a chair beside the bed. He opened the woman's file. Pursing his lips as he read.

"Broken nose and severe bruising and swelling of the face, but fortunately no other fractures or compression. You must have struck a wall, which would explain both your concussion, which is making you feel ill, as well as the damage to your face," he paused. "Any pain in your jaw or mouth?" he asked, needing to be sure now she was awake and able to tell him. "Anything damaged?"

Exploring inside her mouth with the tip of a careful tongue, she felt a blurry wave of relief as everything appeared to be as it ought to be; no gaps or jagged cuts. "No," she grated. "Just very sore and very stiff," she added. "Don't feel like laughing though."

Thibert looked at her again, assessing if she was ready to deal with more unpleasant news. "I suggest you stay away from mirrors for a while until the superficial damage wears off a little or you might frighten yourself," he looked fatalistic. "You had a dislocated right shoulder, which I managed to remedy with a normal reduction, although the soft-tissue and ligament damage are going to cause you discomfort for several weeks," he paused. "You also have three cracked ribs, on the right side and a collapsed right lung," he continued. "We have re-inflated the lung, but you might find yourself a little breathless for a while, as well as having problems taking a deep breath until the ribs heal. How is your breathing?"

"Painful and it takes effort," she whispered, understanding now why all movement was so excruciating, why it was so hard to breathe. "Is that everything?"

"Not quite everything," Thibert made a decision. She had to know sooner or later. He nodded down at the cage over her arm in the bed.

"Your right arm was badly broken beneath a steel panel," he said. "We had to operate to pin the bone and immobilise the wrist, which means it's probably always going to be a little stiff in the future, though I think we are going to be able to save the hand."

She might lose her right hand? She felt a fresh wave of nausea wash over her and she clenched her jaw, waiting for the sensation to fade.

"Will I be able to use my hand again?"

"As long as there's no infection or loss of blood-flow and the bones knit as they should, I don't think you'll have any problems, although you will need rehabilitation if the joint freezes, which is, I have to tell you, a strong possibility."

"Is there anything else?" the woman closed her eyes again and asked. She had to ask, had to know everything there was to know.

"Only the one other thing that we have been able to observe so far," the young man crossed his legs and stared at the woman in the bed.

"And what's that?" she sighed wearily, allowing her head to lie still against the cool of the pillows.

"Who are you?" Thibert asked. "What is your name?"

She opened her eyes slowly and stared up at the distant ceiling. There was nothing but swirling grey mist in her head. "I have absolutely no idea."

"And that's the other things we've been able to determine," he said, exhaling slowly. "You have suffered a fairly major head-injury, the direct result of this is trauma-induced amnesia."

Her memory was gone, she already knew that.

"Will it come back?" she wanted to know, although she wasn't sure if the answer would make any difference.

"Impossible to say with any certainly," Thibert looked down at the file in his hands and scowled in thought. "You will need to speak with our neurologists for more information," he added. "Do you remember anything?" he asked. "Anything at all? A name; a place? _Anything?_" he paused. "Your French is very educated, so perhaps you come from Paris?"

The woman closed her eyes and lay back, pushing into the thick fog of her thoughts. There was a … word. Her eyes blinked wide. "_Narcisse_," she said.

"Narcisse?" Thibert frowned, thoughtful. "The flower?"

"Not the flower," she closed her eyes again and pushed harder into the fog. "The name of somewhere, a place, near Vichy."

"You can remember a place near Vichy connected to the name _Narcisse_?" Thibert raised his eyebrows. "That's _excellent_," he smiled. "So your memory isn't entirely gone, just missing," he nodded. "This is very good news."

"For you, perhaps," she murmured. "Who is paying for me to be in your hospital?" someone had to be paying, and it wasn't her.

"Ayrault's Government is putting its hand in its pocket for you until we can find out who you are so we can send you a bill," Thibert nodded. "You're fortunate"," he added. "All the others casualties went to Nevers Hospital which is now packed solid. By the time you were pulled out of the wreckage, there were no more beds and they sent you here instead," he paused. "We don't usually take emergency cases, but given the nature of the accident, it was the only thing to do."

"You are most kind," she whispered. "I have no idea if I'll be able to pay the government back, assuming I find out who I am, of course," she added.

"If you can remember even a few things, this suggests there's no permanent loss, but just a re-booting of your brain after a nasty event," he smiled. "Sleep now and see if anything else shakes loose. I'll have the nurse give you something to help with the pain and to get you to sleep," he turned by the door. "Don't worry too much," he said. "I'm sure your memory will return in time."

A feeling of absolute dread filled her chest, as if something very important were supposed to be happening and there was no way of telling people where she was. Who would she tell, in any case?

Swallowing the pills and water fed her by the nurse, she closed her eyes as the misery and pain wrapped her in darkness once again.

###

Though there was a hint of first light as he stepped out of the main entrance of the hospital, it was still predominantly dark, his eyes unconsciously scanning the streetscape, his gaze moving to other buildings on the same road: all medical facilities; another hospital not far away, its lights blazing into the night.

The pre-dawn night was calm and clear and very quiet as he stepped into the waiting Mercedes ready to return him to Fourchambault Airport: an unremarkable night, not easy to distinguish or remember.

But Mycroft would remember it. Remember every awful fragmented detail.

He was silent as he climbed aboard the army helicopter and said nothing to anyone as he changed one mode of flight for another at Orly Airport, the waiting private jet taxiing down the runway as soon as the door was dogged tight. The flight to London was as rapid as the earlier one had been and the Jaguar returned him straight to Whitehall.

Walking down the deeply carpeted hallways just as the dawn chorus of commuting traffic began shattering the silence, he stepped into the suite of offices that were his sanctuary as well as the arena of his battles.

Anthea rose stiffly from the chair she been in since he'd left. Her expressive face ashen and distraught, her eyelids pink. The phone beside her was still scrolling the latest news from Nevers.

"No calls, please," Mycroft was mildly surprised at the sound of his own voice: perfectly civil and decorous. He entered his private office and closed the door, hanging his coat in the usual place, dropping his umbrella into its usual stand. He went to his desk and sat, staring at nothing in particular for several minutes.

Reaching into his pocket, his fingers withdrew a small plastic bag. It contained two rings: one of diamonds and platinum, the other with an unusually impressive central sapphire. Tipping them out into his palm, he looked at them closely for quite some time before placing them gently on the polished wood of his desk.

It was only then, only after his mind had asked and answered every possible question it could imagine, that he allowed grief a place. Putting his face in his hands, Mycroft Holmes sat at his desk and wept.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

_The Morning After – A Search for Answers – Impossible Odds – An Unusual Phrase – To France – An Engineer – Time Enough for Grief – Mirror, Mirror – No English._

#

#

It was better, this morning. Not completely better, but the nausea and dizziness were vastly reduced, though her head and face were hurting more, not less. Her right side was an entire continent of pain. Everything else just ached.

But her head felt better, so that was a move in the right direction.

Noel Thibert came in to see her, friendly as he looked at the latest set of observations on her chart.

"You are very resilient," he nodded, pleased. "Despite the trauma, you are recovering far more quickly than I anticipated," he lifted his eyebrows and chewed his bottom lip in thought. "Right," he said, deciding. "Let's get you sitting up, shall we?"

She knew he was joking. There was no way in the name of any deity he cared to invoke that she was going to be able to move, let alone get out of the bed.

"You're mad," she croaked. "Quite mad."

"Now, now," he grinned, lifting the covers carefully away, his fingertips running softly down the front of her bare legs. "Feel that?"

"Yes, I can," she said, surprised the touch was painless. Carefully lifting her head and looking down at her newly revealed body, she saw she was wearing some kind of voluminous, short sleeved cotton robe, tied loosely at the waist. From the feel of things, she wore nothing beneath it. It didn't matter. Nakedness was a moot issue at this moment.

"Good," the young doctor smiled again. "Nothing stopping you using your legs, in that case, though you have several spectacular bruises. Let's just get you sitting up for a while and see how we go from there."

She closed her eyes and breathed as deeply as she could before the daggers of cracked ribs spiked her again. Looking up, she saw him still standing there, waiting.

"You're not going to go away until I do this, are you?" she knew the answer before he opened his mouth. "Okay," she gritted her teeth. "I'll try."

Wiggling her toes and then her feet towards the side of the bed, she used her undamaged left hand to begin to push upright; the pain intensified. She gasped as her chest and shoulder burned like hot lava.

"Carefully, now," Thibert was at her left side, his arm around her back holding her still. "I have you," he said softly. "You're not going to fall. I have you safe."

With agonising slowness, she eased herself towards the edge of the bed, until both her feet were flat on the floor and she was sitting as upright as she could manage given the immoderate ensemble of pain. Her head spun momentarily and her stomach churned, but she breathed hard and the nausea calmed. Her right side was entirely on fire.

"Stay like that for a while and catch your breath," he was looking pleased. "You're doing very well."

"I think I might learn to dislike you, Doctor Thibert," she closed her eyes, swallowing as the dizziness rose again. "Water, please."

He was there immediately with a beaker of cold water and a straw. "Just sip," he said, "and breathe."

"Why does everything hurt more now than last night?" she bit her lip as the damaged ribs flared heat.

"Your entire body was numb and in shock, but it's starting to wear off," Thibert nodded understandingly. "Plus the nerves that were compressed with your injuries are decompressing and letting you know they're not happy, and I've started to ease you off the morphine," he added, looking brightly at her. "So no surprise you're a little tender."

_Tender_ did not begin to approach how she felt at that moment. She lowered her head, taking another semi-deep breath. "I want to stand," she said. "Help me, please."

"Very well," Thibert stood in front of her. "But only for a few seconds, and then sit down again," he added. "Let's not overdo this just yet."

Had it not been for the pain, she would have laughed. Now that she was actually vertical, there was no chance she was simply going to lie back down. Setting her feet far enough apart that they felt secure and holding tight to Thibert's arm with her uninjured hand, she took another breath and made her legs take her weight. She pushed upright.

And instantly sank back down.

It felt as if she were lifting a mountain on her back. Everything was so heavy that she wobbled, her legs shaking, her chest heaving painfully.

"I can't," she gasped. "I can't do it."

"A little too soon for such an ambition, perhaps," the doctor handed her the water. "But a brave try."

Sipping the water steadied her stomach as she breathed, and calming her racing heart. She had never known how hard it could be simply to stand upright.

"Let me try one more time," she said, handing Thibert the beaker. "Just let me try."

Puffing out his cheeks, the young doctor nodded once as he bent to slide an arm delicately around her back.

Knowing what she was up against this time she braced one leg against the side of the bed and, leaning heavily on the doctor's support, she took another breath and pushed all the way upright until she was standing firmly on the cool vinyl flooring. Thibert's arm was beneath her shoulder-blades.

"Let me go, please," she muttered. "I want to stand by myself."

"Only for a second, then," he looked at her sideways. He wanted to get his patient mobile as quickly as possible but not to have her pass out from the pain.

As she felt his support diminish, she wobbled but adjusted her balance and simply stood there. Though she felt a dozen different levels of pain, she was at least able to do this.

Beneath her lividly bruised and swollen face, she managed the shadow of a smile. She wasn't dead quite yet.

It was almost twenty-four hours since the accident.

###

As soon as a superficial measure of composure had returned, a thin veneer of numbness between his mind and his pain, Mycroft called for tea. It seemed the thing to do. Anthea brought it to him herself; she could only imagine how he must be feeling.

"What can I do to help?" she asked, simply. "Tell me what you need and I'll do it," she added. "Anything."

"I will speak with my brother and Doctor Watson first, I think," his voice was uncharacteristically enervated as he sipped the scaldingly-hot liquid and felt the heat work its little magic. "Send the Jaguar to Baker Street, please."

"Sir." _Thank God he was going to talk to someone, _she thought_. Even if it was Sherlock._ Anthea felt marginally reassured, having half expected Mycroft to lock himself away. She lifted her Blackberry, relieved to use it for something other than the reception of bad news.

Giving the driver ten minutes, Mycroft rang Sherlock's mobile. As usual, John answered, his brother's voice muttering something in the background before he spoke with his usual impatience.

"Yes, Mycroft? What is it now? Lost an air-craft carrier?"

Swallowing, Mycroft hesitated for the minutest fraction of a second. Despite Sherlock's deliberate rudeness, he was genuinely fond of his sister-in-law. Cate's … _demise_ … he found he could not use the other word … would be a cruel blow.

"There has been an accident," he said, quietly.

That Sherlock failed to offer an instant and glib response indicated he had perceived a subtext to his brother's words.

"Who was involved?" Sherlock's voice was suddenly terribly serious. There was even the sense that he was holding his breath.

"Cate was on the derailed French TGV," Mycroft spoke very gently. "I saw her body last night."

There was a flood of silence; of furious, tortured, silent words.

"_God_, Mycroft," Sherlock sounded aghast. "_God_."

"I need to speak with you; will you come to my office?"

"Have you sent the … _ah_, you have," there was a pause as the younger Holmes stepped back from the window of his flat. "I shall ask John to accompany me." Mycroft pictured the unspoken conversation taking place in 221B. "We'll be there shortly."

The phone fell silent.

Calling for fresh tea, Mycroft steepled his fingers and sat back, a feeling heavier than exhaustion dragging at his thoughts. All he wanted to do was to be alone for a very long time; to find a place where he could go through everything his mind was screaming at him; to find some place of respite, if only for a short while. But he could not leave; he could not simply walk away no matter how strong the desire. There were others to consider.

A fresh burning arose in his chest. _He had to tell the children. He had to tell Cate's sister._

In the stillness of his office, Mycroft felt another layer of ice form within him, taking him further still from the aching pain that choked his every breath and dimmed his mind. He still needed to function, to operate, thus he welcomed the bitter withdrawal with relief.

Anthea brought the visitors in and they stood, mutely, looking at the elder Holmes.

It was John who broke the overwhelming atmosphere. He was grim, opening his mouth, then stopped, the fingers of his left hand lifting into the air as if to ask the questions his voice could not. He shook his head questioningly.

"Yes, Doctor Watson," Mycroft looked down at the desktop, his eyes bleak. "It's true."

"But _how_?" John had no words to ask half the questions suddenly in his head.

"I do not know how, or at least," Mycroft shifted in his chair and took a deep breath. "I have very few details as to _how_," he said. "Cate and I were in Paris for the weekend. I was … I was called away and left her yesterday morning with an old friend she met at the hotel. Yesterday afternoon the credit card company contacted her emergency number with a next-of-kin query," he stopped, abruptly, staring down at his hands. Hands that only yesterday had held her close, had touched her face …

Mycroft jerked his head up, pushing the images back. _Not now_. _Now was not the time_.

"Who is in charge of the investigation?" Sherlock spoke for the first time. "The Sûreté or French Counter-Intelligence?"

"There is no suspicion as yet that it was anything but an accident, although there is the possibility of driver-culpability," Mycroft's voice was attenuated to his brother's ears; thin and distant. "The Sûreté are doing their usual job."

"But not the job you want," Sherlock poured himself tea and sat, almost gulping the steaming brew as if the stinging discomfort would help. "You want to know everything."

"Yes," Mycroft stared at his own cup without touching it. "Cate was ... the body was too badly damaged for positive identification," his voice was touched with darkness. "I cannot leave London now ... the children ..." he hesitated. "I need you to be my eyes and ears, Sherlock. I want to know what happened to Cate's friend, what caused the train to derail and _what_ …" his voice faded. He took a deep breath. "… What Cate was doing there in the first place," he added in a whisper. "I want to know why she … _why_ …" he paused, blinking. "I need to explain to our children why their mother isn't coming home."

His words fading into nothing, Mycroft felt a muscle in his jaw betray him _Not now. Not now. Not yet._

The silence was excruciating. John found himself swallowing hard against a lump in his throat. Whatever else he might be, Mycroft Holmes was a man of deep feelings and it would be clear, even to a stranger that he was on the edge of an emotional abyss.

"Don't say anything for a while, Mycroft," John managed to gravel out the words. "At their age, time is still a vague thing and they don't need to be told right away," he paused. "Give yourself some space to get your own head around things before you … before you feel you have to say anything. They won't notice the difference between one day or a few."

Meeting the doctor's eyes for the first time, Mycroft smiled faintly. "These are _my_ children, John," he barely breathed the words. "They will know something is wrong the instant they see me without their mother," he shook his head. "I cannot count on the least part of grace where they are concerned, I'm afraid."

"Then we should begin sooner rather than later," Sherlock's grey-blue eyes fixed on his brother's face. Mycroft looked up and saw everything his sibling had to say: the shared pain, the unspeakable sorrow of loss. That he too would grieve.

Mycroft closed his eyes against it all. It was too much; the emotion was too raw. He nodded. "If you would," he said. "Anthea will provide the details."

With a final stare at his brother, Sherlock turned on his heel and strode away.

A second later, John was on his feet, an expression of utter sadness on his face. "If you need to talk, Mycroft," he said quietly. "Any time, then call," he looked down at the floor, unsure what else he could say that would be of use or help. "Any time."

As the door closed behind them, Mycroft rested his face in his hands once again, but his grief was arid ... _not yet_,_ not yet_ ... He felt an incredible weariness.

Anthea returned. "You might feel better if you went home and had a little sleep," she suggested. "A nap, even."

Silently acknowledging her desire to help, Mycroft realised the very last thing he was ready to do was go home.

###

Moreau lit a new cigarette with the old one as he leaned against the exterior wall of the doorway. The sheltered nook had become a haven for the smokers who were still prepared to run the gauntlet of censuring and occasionally envious looks.

He thought about the Englishman who had flown from London to find his wife. When de Chabot had handed over the rings, he had seen the man's face tighten and pale: there was no question he understood what the rings meant. So why was he so adamant about seeing the body? Why wasn't he prepared to accept from them that the burned and blackened corpse in the morgue was his wife? The Englishman had said nothing after viewing the remains, not that there was a great deal to see. The fire had indeed been fierce.

There were so many disfigured bodies down there now that they hadn't yet been able to identify the corpse of the Englishwoman's travelling companion. The seat had been booked in the name of one Tallis Varon, obviously French, but her body was one of several that was in the group that was, as yet. unidentified. With some of them, it was impossible to tell which gender they were looking at, let along anything else. Who knew when, or even _if_, they would be able to identify all of them? It might be a case of waiting to see if the relatives turned up, or if there were any reports of missing persons. Moreau shook his head, a sour expression on his face. It was a bad business. A very bad business.

"How many are left?" de Chabot wrinkled his nose as a waft of smoke blew his way.

Moreau knew exactly what his boss wanted to know. How many bodies were still without names.

"Six," Claude stubbed out his half-smoked Marlborough. "But we are still waiting on the autopsy reports on them as they were the most damaged and the least easy to identify," he took a deep breath. "They can't even tell us if they're male or female."

"Have there been any more inquiries about missing people who might have been on the train?" Gilles rubbed his face with both hands. Apart from a few hours' sleep caught in one of the unoccupied cells, he'd been awake for nearly forty-eight hours and tiredness was slowing his thinking. He would have to sleep soon, if only to bring his mind back online.

"I was wondering," Moreau stared up at the bright sky. "What if someone whose name was on the list escaped through one of the rear carriages?" he asked. "We'd be trying to match a body to a name, but it'd be the wrong body."

"In this kind of situation, that's always a possibility," the lieutenant stuck his hands in his trouser pockets. "But as we have no idea if anyone else escaped from the front carriages, then we have to assume nobody did, at least until we can prove otherwise," he added. "All we have left to work with now are the dead," he rubbed his eyes again. "And to be realistic," he said. "What odds would you put on anyone escaping the first carriage alive and unhurt?"

"I wouldn't bet on those kinds of odds, Gilles," Moreau scowled. "We've spoken to the only two who did make it out."

"This means that the names we have left must belong to the bodies we have, so let's go and speak with the forensic people again." De Chabot walked off.

Shrugging his agreement, the sergeant followed. His lieutenant was right. Nobody else could have made it out alive.

###

After accepting some painkillers she lay back and focused, trying to recall anything of her current life. But there was still nothing. She lay, fretting with frustration.

Now that she was able to move a little, she examined the strange-looking cast on her right arm. Not a solid log of white plaster as she had assumed, this one was a lightweight honeycomb affair made of plastic.

Thibert had smiled, pleased when she took an interest. "It's the latest thing," he grinned. "Called a _Cortex Cast_, it's 3D-printed structure, made from a heavyweight plastic to the exact shape of your arm and allows for all sort of good things. Much better for you than a conventional cast."

Looking like something out of a science-fiction story, it felt so light and slim that she wasn't sure it was safe. It felt like she wasn't protected at all.

The dressing that covered the surgical scar along the outside of her forearm was, beneath the futuristic fretwork, open to the elements.

"What if you need to change the dressing?" she asked, lifting her arm slowly and carefully. It throbbed.

"See these?" the doctor pointed with a fingertip to a series of tiny plastic tabs. "These simply pop open and closed and we can do everything we need. It's ingenious," he smiled again. "Some man in New Zealand invented it, but I never want to go back to messy plaster again."

"It's bloody incredible," she agreed.

_That was odd_. That wasn't a phrase the French normally used. That was more...

"Can you speak English?" he asked unexpectedly, in English.

"I don't know ..." she stopped, suddenly, her heart thumping. Her response had been in the same language. "_Oh_," she added, surprised. "Apparently I do."

"Your English is very good too," he observed. "So you could be educated French who speaks very good English, or the other way around."

"I suppose it's possible." she said, reverting to French. It felt more comfortable, somehow.

"Well, whatever you are, I've arranged for you to have another x-ray this morning to ensure that the cast is doing its job and everything is still aligned now that the swelling is beginning to reduce," he nodded, handing her a fresh beaker of water. "Drink," he said. "You need to rehydrate."

###

Sherlock scanned the data Anthea had sent to his Blackberry. She had also arranged a plane for them direct to Paris, a quick refuel, then down to Nevers. They would be there in the afternoon.

But little of that interested him, his mind more concerned with the fact that there was precious little hard data on the victims. Plenty of background and situational evidence, but not much on the casualties or where and how they died.

"They probably won't release details about individuals until all the dead have been identified," John raked hard fingertips across his skull. He still couldn't believe this was happening. That _Cate_, of all people...

"They're finding it difficult to match names to bodies," Sherlock pursed his lips. "The extent of the damage done to a modern, heat- and fire-resistant train with all manner of safety features built into the very fabric of the design, suggests that the blaze was both intense and prolonged," he frowned. "It's entirely feasible some bodies were reduced to little more than ash."

"Which automatically rules out DNA-sampling," the doctor sat back and folded his arms. That Mycroft had been unable to identify Cate's body argued that it must have been in a bad way. He shuddered, imagining what the experience would have done to the elder Holmes. "So what will they do?"

Stepping out of the Jaguar and striding rapidly across the brief expanse of tarmac towards the small private plane, Sherlock turned, hands in his pockets. "They'll stall," he said, bending his long back as he stepped up into the aircraft. "They'll stall and do anything to give themselves time, anything to enable them to present a complete picture to the international public gaze," he buckled himself into a seat. "The French authorities will suffer no unanswerable questions when it comes time to defend the apple of their technological eye," he added, relaxing and preparing himself for a nap. "I am going to sleep for the duration of the journey, please do not wake me."

"How can you sleep at a time like this?" John was stupefied. He knew Sherlock was distressed by the news; he had seen the tall man's face when he was speaking with Mycroft on the phone. There had been genuine shock and distress there.

Opening his eyes, Sherlock sighed intolerantly. "John I do not expect to sleep again until we return to London, whenever that event might be, thus I am replenishing my reserves while I have an opportunity to do so."

The blonde man's expression didn't alter.

"It will do none of us, least of all Cate, any good if I become overly weary in the middle of the investigation," he added, in a more conciliatory tone. "I will not dishonour her with less than my very best."

"Fair enough," John was prepared to be mollified, relaxing his shoulders as his friend composed himself once more for sleep. "And I shall consider the facts of the case," he added, closing his own eyes.

Despite the awful situation, Sherlock's mouth curled fractionally at one corner.

###

Gilles de Chabot sat back in his cheap office seat and scowled at the top of his desk. He folded his arms and scowled at the wall, then at the door. When he was done with that, he gave the view from his window a serious glare.

Something about this situation felt wrong. _Very wrong_.

It wasn't only that they still had not been able to match names to bodies, but that the bodies they had found appeared to be in all the wrong places. There had been twelve passengers in the first carriage: the old woman with the cut hands, the man who lost his leg, the family of eight, all apparently dead and the two women at the front of the carriage, also dead.

That meant, of the twelve people in the front carriage, there should be ten bodies. Yet there were only nine and three of those had already been categorically identified. Admittedly, the fire had been particularly destructive in that area and it had not been possible to clearly identify the remaining bodies, but it seemed to him that they might be, just possibly, a corpse short.

But whose?

The derailment had torn the carriages apart, then crashed them back together, so that seats and walls and partitions were no longer in the places they would have been. People had been thrown all over the place. It was amazing they found the British woman's corpse anywhere near her seat ... it was only her distinctive rings that enabled them to offer any clear identification to the husband in the first place.

So if there was a body missing or in the wrong place, where had it gone?

Standing abruptly, de Chabot banged on the window of his office, alerting Moreau on the other side.

"We're going to Levallois-Perret to talk to an engineer," he said. "Right now."

"Paris?" Moreau looked a little surprised.

"_Paris_," de Chabot lifted a phone, arranging transport.

###

"I do not believe sleep would assist me at this point," Mycroft's body-language belied his words. He was exhausted and they both knew it.

"Sir," she said. "You need rest, even if it's only a few minutes for your body to relax."

"I am unable to return to my home at this point in time," he stared down at his desk-top again, as if something in the unmarred and shining surface focused his thoughts.

"Then at least use the sofa in your private room," she refused to allow him to wriggle away. An hour's sleep would make such a difference.

"_I won't sleep_," his stare turned savage as his gaze stabbed into her. "I may never sleep again," he groaned softly, wrapping the long fingers of one hand across his face.

"The simply lie down with a blanket and close your eyes," Anthea was hardly about to give up; she had worked with him for far too long. "Even for ten minutes."

He sighed. She was never going to cease and he was too weary to contest the argument. He would lie down for the prescribed ten-minutes then arise and continue and she would let him be.

Lifting himself slowly from his chair, Mycroft felt a new weight on his shoulders, a strange heaviness to his bones. Following his assistant into the private room beyond his office, he saw that she had already made up one of her emergency 'beds' and a cocoon of blankets and a couple of pillows now awaited his presence on a long and unusually comfortable couch.

He sighed again.

"Very well," he struggled tiredly with his jacket and waistcoat, but she made no move to help. There were some lines she would not cross. Folding his clothes over the back of a chair, he undid his laces and placed his shiny black brogues to one side, before pulling back the velvety and thermally practical blanket as he stretched out along the sofa.

It was surprising how much his body thanked him for the change in position as he felt the stiffness of his back gradually ease in the softness and warmth.

"I'll give you some peace," Anthea nodded, leaving the room and closing the door behind her.

Mycroft decided to stay where he was for the directed ten minutes, at least until he could say he'd tried to nap. He'd let the tight muscles in his back ease for just a little while longer, let the warmth of the soft covering make him feel, if only for a second, as if there were still some comfort to be had in the world ...

Thirty-minutes later, Anthea knocked discreetly on the door before pushing it open.

With the blanket dragged up into his arms, Mycroft Holmes was so deeply asleep, even the midday light on his face was unable to cause him discomfort.

Silently closing the blinds, Anthea felt a moment's respite from the ache of sorrow and pain, not all of it hers. There would be time enough for grieving when he awoke.

###

Lying in the hospital bed with nothing to do and waiting to be taken to the radiology department for x-rays, she continued probing her thoughts for a clue, any kind of clue, as to who she was.

She wore no rings, although there was a faint line on the ring-finger of her left hand which suggested she might have worn one until recently. There were no identifying marks she could see apart from an oddly-placed inoculation scar on her upper right arm that looked almost like a bullet-wound. Her ears were pierced and the nurse had told her she was wearing a pair of imitation diamond studs; imitation, because they were obviously too big to be real. So she wasn't rich, then. The clothes she had worn upon arrival had disappeared – probably disposed of since they had been blood-soaked and damaged by fire and rough treatment, so not even the labels were left to provide a clue.

Returning her attention to her body, she could see she was fairly fit – her muscles were sore and painful, but they were also smooth and she could feel their firmness beneath her skin. _Pale skin_, she realised, not the colour it would be if she usually worked outside. Nor were her hands calloused and rough. So did she have an indoor job? What kind of job was it?

Thibert said her English was very good, as was her French, although she felt more comfortable using French for some reason. Perhaps she worked with a lot of English-speaking people, or in a role which demanded that she have a lot of communication with English people? Maybe she was a Travel Agent?

She wracked her mind to try and find any connection with travel and the image of Paris emerged from the mists. _Paris_. That was something, at least. Perhaps she lived there?

Examining her hands again, she could see her nails were well-kept and manicured, although not varnished. Oddly, while not rough, the outer edges of both hands felt strangely hard, as if they were regularly used for something physically arduous, but there were no marks or callouses, so she wasn't sure what she did with them ... it was something physical though, she was sure of it.

They hadn't yet brought her the mirror she'd requested: perhaps they didn't want her to be upset, in which case she must look awful. She sighed carefully. Nothing about this situation was going to be easy. She wondered if there was anyone out there worrying about her.

###

The regional airport at Nevers was much like any other small European stop-off: close to town, runways built for light-aircraft more than anything seriously heavyweight. The private plane taxied to a halt a short distance from the main airport building. A sign pointing to _Douanes_ led them to a cab-rank beyond.

"_Hôpital de Nevers_, s'il vous plaît," Sherlock handed a folded Euro note to the driver who had seen a surge in business over the last day.

"_Bien sûr_, Monsieur," the driver slid the Peugeot into gear and headed off towards the main entrance of the City hospital.

"Qui est en charge des victimes d'accident?" Sherlock asked, wondering who it was he'd need to speak with once they arrived.

"Il est Docteur Gerrard," the driver added, happy to supply the information. He had been doing better than usual with the tips since the accident. No reason to jeopardise that.

Supplementing the original Euro note with a sibling, Sherlock stepped from the cab heading to the main foyer of the hospital. Like all municipal enterprises, it was a little chaotic; people everywhere - on crutches, in wheelchairs, just sitting and waiting.

"Docteur Gerrard, s'il vous plaît," the younger Holmes waited impatiently, his fingertips strumming an urgent tempo.

"Je suis Gerrard," a tired-looking individual looked at the two men from where he stood, a folder of papers in his hands. He assessed them. "You are not French," he said. "What do you want?"

"Correct, Doctor," Sherlock threw him a mercurial smile. "We are from London and are investigating the apparent death of a passenger in this terrible accident."

"Then speak with the police," Gerrard was sour. He had had enough of answering questions to last him a lifetime. "Good-day to you."

"You know that the world's papers are already calling this _Gerrard's Accident_, don't you?" Sherlock sounded apologetic.

"_What?_" the doctor turned back. "They're calling it _what_?"

"Your name, rightly or wrongly, is being connected to this dreadful mess," Sherlock looked sympathetic, which told John everything about the conversation. "We are here to get to the truth, but if you are unconcerned about your reputation ..."

"My _reputation_? How is that being affected by all ... _this_?" Gerrard asked, bewildered.

"So unfair," Sherlock continued. "How a good man's name and career might be ruined overnight by a few words printed on a news-sheet," he looked pained. "Sad, really."

Recognising that he was not about to get any sense from this tall, dark-haired Englishman, Gerrard closed his eyes and gave in. "What do you really want?" he asked, too drained to keep fighting.

"Details of all casualties for the train-wreck," Sherlock was instantly all business. "Names of living and dead, where the living are and a chance to speak with them all."

"You are crazy," Gerrard shook his head. "Not even the police have all those details yet."

"Then information of all British passengers would help," Sherlock stood over the shorter man, almost willing him to acquiesce.

"There are no British passengers here at all," Gerrard's face relaxed at such a simple question. "The survivors are all French," he added. "Now please go."

About to challenge that statement, Sherlock felt John's hand on his arm, he turned, looking down at the blonde man. John shook his head silently.

"Not good?" Sherlock queried uncertainly.

"A bit," John tugged his arm. "There are other ways," he said under his breath.

Turning to bid farewell to Gerrard, they saw the man had already gone.

"How?" Sherlock allowed himself to be guided to the main doors where he stood in the capacious front entrance, taking note of the rest of Avenue Colbert. "_Wait_," he added, interrupting whatever it was John was about to suggest. "There's another hospital down there," he said. "Wonder if they had anything to do with the accident victims?"

"I was about to say we wait and ask some of the nurses later," John was mildly annoyed by the interruption, then annoyed at himself for being annoyed with Sherlock. He had shared a flat with a Holmes for long enough now to know what to expect.

"And we can do that by all means," Sherlock added, striding out towards the second hospital just over a block away. "But first, let's take a look at this establishment, shall we?"

The pretty receptionist at the Hospital Colbert spoke very passable English, enabling John to smile and sound bashful as he asked if anyone from the train accident had been brought here.

"I do not think so, Monsieur," the receptionist smiled winningly. "All survivors were taken to Nevers hospital as we do not have an emergency area here," she paused, looking thoughtful. "But I have been away for several days, so I suppose if someone _had_ come here I would not know it," she added. "You should speak with Doctor Thibert," she smiled again, more certain this time. "Doctor Thibert deals with all new patients and he would be able to advise you more than I could."

"And how can we get to speak with Doctor Thibert?" John smiled persuasively, leaning over the top of the marble counter. She smelled of spring flowers. He smiled some more.

"I'll page him for you, if you wish? I have some documents for him in any case," the receptionist stared up into a pair of cornflower-blue eyes and wondered why Englishmen were so _charmant_.

"Please do," Sherlock leaned over his flatmate's shoulder to break up the positively gooey nature of the dialogue.

It was only minutes later that Noel Thibert walked out of the nearest lift, hands in the pockets of his white ward-coat.

"May I assist you?" he asked, helpfully, taking the several papers handed him by the woman.

"Good afternoon, Doctor Thibert," Sherlock confronted the man. "We are interested in survivors of the accident who may have been brought here instead on the main hospital. Do you have any such patients?"

"And who is it that asks such a question?" Thibert wasn't born yesterday; he knew how reporters worked.

"My name is Holmes," Sherlock offered his hand. "Sherlock Holmes."

Thibert stilled. The surname was horribly, hauntingly familiar. He paused, flicking his eyes down to the papers in his hand.

Sherlock could not fail to see the man's reaction. "You know the name? Perhaps you have a patient of that name?"

"Would such a patient be connected to you?" Thibert looked thoughtful, signing a document.

"To my brother," Sherlock took an impatient breath. "His name is Mycroft Holmes and we are looking for his wife, a British citizen by the name of Catherine or Cate," he paused. "You clearly know the name of Holmes ... is she here? Anyone from the train who might have seen her?"

Slowly looking up from the rest of the papers in his hand, Noel Thibert lifted his eyebrows and smiled calmly. "No, Monsieur," he shook his head. "There is nobody here with that name, nor do we have any English patients," he said. "Only French. And none from the accident. Your brother's wife is not here."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

_The Old Delivery Routine – X-Rays – Bring Her Home – Looking for An Emergency – No Questions Asked – Packed – The Hip of Madame Navas – How to Lose a Patient – Jeanne DuPont – A Matter for the Sûreté._

#

#

It was clearly a lie, but not entire and not absolute. There was truth as well as deceit; the trouble lay in deciphering the former from the latter.

"You have no British patients here at all?" Sherlock's stare drilled into the light-brown gaze of the French doctor. "Are you quite sure?"

Allowing himself a frown, Thibert lowered his eyes to the papers in his hands once again, flicking the last few over and affixing a second signature with a slight flourish. "Monsieur Holmes," the Frenchman looked up and smiled again although his expression was a little less genial. "I have already told you we do not – this is an hospital that deals mostly with long-term patients, victims of progressive illnesses and terminal conditions, not emergency cases," he returned the papers to the receptionist. "There is no point looking for your brother's wife here," he added, his eyes radiating candour. "You will not find her."

About to challenge that statement, Sherlock felt John touch his elbow for the second time that day. He paused and turned.

"Thank you for your time and assistance, Doctor Thibert," John smiled convincingly as he tugged his flatmate away from the receptionist's desk. "Sorry to have bothered you."

Waiting until they were out in the late-afternoon sunshine, Sherlock turned, unhappy. "_What?_" he said. "The man was clearly not speaking the complete truth; there is something distinctly suspect going on in that hospital and he certainly knew Cate's name," he pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I need to go back in there and have a look around."

"Yes, of course we need to have a look," John kept Sherlock walking around the corner of the old hospital and down a narrow brick-paved lane. "But to try and force an entry through the front-door would only have us escorted out by the several large gentlemen with walkie-talkies and side arms sitting and drinking coffee in the little office behind the reception-desk."

"How did you know there were security personnel in that office?" Sherlock was momentarily intrigued. Of course there was a security unit in there, but he was impressed John had noticed the paint wear-pattern on the door-edge.

"It's where I'd put security guards, or at least," John paused, considering. "A few of them," he said. "I'd probably have a few others stashed around the place, just in case."

"If we cannot go in the front door, we shall need to locate an auxiliary entrance to make good our investigations," Sherlock observed their location. They were almost at the rear of the 1930s building; John came to a halt, a pleased grin on his face.

"Don't forget, Sherlock," he muttered, stepping forward again, leading the way. "I've been around hospitals for a long time, especially old ones," he nodded ahead of them. "And if there's one thing they all have in common, it's a laundry-entrance."

No more than forty meters away was a large, open-bay delivery gate, complete with heavy old roller-doors and a number of parked vans. Just beyond that, a slightly newer, glass-gated addition offered an entrance to several small private ambulances. Thibert had at least been truthful in his comment that this place was not designed to cope with emergencies.

"Not the old laundry-delivery routine?" Sherlock was already at the rear of the nearest van. The doors were wide open with a number of large white bags full of what he assumed were clean linens. Leaning in, he pulled one out, handing it to his accomplice in crime. He pulled out a second and heaved it up onto his shoulder. He grinned. "Let's go, then," tucking his chin down, he stared at the old tarmac beneath his shoes as they walked unchecked into the back of Colbert Hospital.

###

She found that the more she moved around, the easier it became. Everything was still horrendously slow, of course, hideously awkward and cruelly painful, but she was able to judge the pain now before it happened and was ready for it, or at least able to grit her teeth through it.

This was clearly an old building, as her bed was wheeled along she saw cool, wide marble corridors with high and ornate ceilings and gothic windows. The style of the décor was instantly recognisable as being from the Art Deco period, although she had no idea how she would know that. _How would she know that?_ Did she work in the art world? Was she an artist? An architect?

Going down in the ancient lift, the gears cranking slowly through their routine, she pondered again how it was she knew certain things but not others. Perhaps whenever she heard or saw something that was familiar to her, it would bring back another memory? If so, then it made sense to go to the places that meant something to her – Vichy, for instance. That location, that town had _meaning_ for her – that, and _Narcisse_, whatever and wherever it was.

Being wheeled around in bed was surprisingly relaxing and she found herself on the edge of sleep, only to be shaken gently awake by a smiling nurse waiting to help her off the bed and into position for the necessary x-rays.

While it wasn't a long job, she would have to wait, the nurse told her, until they had developed the films to ensure all the details were clear, so she may as well make herself comfortable. She was going to be down here for a while.

###

It was late afternoon when he finally dragged himself out of the clinging torpor of sleep. Even though the sheer depth of his slumber now demanded his thoughts fumble their way up through a layer of cloying woolliness, at least he felt some of the grinding exhaustion had gone.

Sitting up and rubbing his face, Mycroft walked into his office and rang for tea. Heading back through his private rooms to a small bathroom at the rear, he washed his face and combed his hair straight before re-dressing. The sleep, the wash, the slight lessening of fatigue all helped, albeit fractionally. As of now, however, he would take whatever improvements he might find, no matter how slight or ephemeral.

Tea arrived, as did Anthea who looked as if she could do with some rest of her own.

"Feeling any better?" she asked, pouring and handing him a cup.

"Slightly less weary," he nodded. "Thank you for the good advice."

"All part of the job, sir," she managed a smile. Standing back, she examined his face, still pale but somewhat more composed. "What do we do next?"

Sipping his tea, Mycroft sat back in his chair. "We gather and collate all data regarding the train and the accident," his eyes narrowed. "I also need to speak to my colleagues in both the Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure and ANSSI," he pursed his mouth. "I also want a briefing, today, from MI6 on our preparedness for possible attacks on the Chanel tunnel, as well as at all major stations and transport hubs," he added. "The derailment might have been a simple accident, but I've found there is rarely anything quite as complex as a simple accident where national security is concerned."

Anthea paused, utterly reluctant to raise the issue, but she knew she was going to anyway. "And about arrangements for Cate?" her voice was soft and husky with sudden pain.

Mycroft replaced his cup in its saucer with barely a tremor.

"Bring her home," he whispered, staring fixedly at the delicate filigree of gold around the outside of the bone china cup. "Bring her home to me."

###

Dumping their white sacks on top of a pile of identical bags in an empty hallway, John peered around quickly before grabbing Sherlock's arm and dragging him off along a deserted corridor. "In here, _quick_," he opened a door and stepped through into a room full of shelves and shelves of sheets, towels and all the sundry accoutrements of modern hospital existence.

"I'll grab us a couple of lab-coats and we can go for a bit of a walk," John was already scanning around for the disguise. Sherlock purloined a large clipboard full of what appeared to be laundry bills of lading.

"_Good grief_," he muttered, reading. "Two _thousand_ sheets a week?"

"Yeah, sick people, _eh_?" the blonde doctor muttered. "Who'd have thought they'd actually be sick?" John threw a long white coat at his friend. "Stick that on and try not to act squeamish."

"I am hardly that," the younger Holmes sniffed as he pulled the garment around his shoulders.

"Not around dead people, no," John opened the door and had a swift _recce_. "All clear," he said. "Let's go."

"In a hospital like this, where would you put someone injured in an accident?"

"In a hospital like this, you wouldn't normally _have_ anyone who had been injured in an accident," John made a face. "Let's see if there's an intensive care unit or whatever they call that in a French hospital."

"_Soins intensifs_," Sherlock nodded at the list of departments on the wall by a lift. "_Septième étage,_" he added. "Seventh floor."

"If anyone asks you what you're doing, just look at your watch and shake your head," John advised. "For God's sake, don't try and be clever."

"I don't have to try," Sherlock allowed himself a faint smile. "Besides, I might even be able to garner some faintly interesting data on the longevity of ..." his sentence faded as he saw his accomplice was not the least bit impressed.

"I swear, Sherlock," John waved a finger at his chest. "If you start buggerising about, you can explain it to Mycroft, because I'm not that brave."

Blinking slowly, Sherlock nodded. "Quite right," he said, pressing the lift button. "Going up."

Though there were indeed people walking around the various corridors and stairwells; the odd small group in deep discussion by doorways or in small rooms next to a bed, the entire hospital was uncannily quiet. There was no clanking of trolleys or tea-trays as they traversed the near-empty hallways; it was entirely too hushed.

"Looks like Thibert wasn't lying about everything," Sherlock wasn't even bothering to look like a doctor anymore as he stuck his head into every room they passed. Each room held two beds at most, usually surrounded by an arc of complicated-looking machinery that pumped oxygen or liquids or drugs; monitors that beeped at regular intervals. There were very few visitors, which went part way to explaining the utter quiet. There was absolutely no sense of emergency anywhere. This was a house of the long-term ill, where urgency had long ago been left behind.

Reaching level seven and making it all the way along to the end of a passage where a modern wall of glass divided the last part of the wing from the rest of the floor, they were able to see a small self-contained area, sufficient for six beds in a horseshoe-arrangement. Each station was enveloped in a bank of technology with tubes and leads and lines coiling out of the wall behind each bed like some fantastic spaceship.

"Interesting," Sherlock muttered, staring in through the glass.

"Why interesting?" John peered in through the same glass. Six intensive care stations, all of them vacant. Then he saw what Sherlock had already seen. _Ah_.

There were only five beds.

One of the beds was elsewhere. Possibly elsewhere with someone in it.

"Do we wait or keep looking?" John glanced back over his shoulder. The corridor was still empty behind them, but there was no certainty it would continue that way if they stayed where they were.

"We can return later, so I suggest we keep looking, especially in those places where an emergency patient might be taken. Where might that be?"

John thought. "Depends on what's wrong with them," he pursed his lips. "Could be in surgery and I'm fairly certain there would be at least two surgical suites in this place," he paused, still considering. "Could be off having various tests and scans, might be in radiology for x-rays, could be in several places, actually."

"Not exactly helpful, John," Sherlock frowned at the options, the operating theatres were a floor below, but if they weren't able to wait here, they had to begin somewhere. "Surgery, then," he muttered. "Let's see if there's anyone in this non-emergency institution having an emergency procedure."

###

Noel Thibert was in a quandary. As soon as he had heard the name Holmes, his heart had pounded in his chest, just at the merest _mention_ of the name. And yet it had been so long. He had to check, had to be sure. _Holmes_, though not the most common of British family names, was not totally unheard of, either. A coincidence was entirely possible and so he had to check, to _confirm_.

But the tall, dark-haired man, the _arrogant_ one ... and that alone should have told him what he wanted to know, Thibert realised, had quashed any possibility of coincidence with his next breath. _My brother_, the tall man had said. _Mycroft Holmes_ ... he was seeking _the wife of Mycroft Holmes_...

It was in that second that Noel Thibert decided upon the course of action that left him now in a dilemma. He had told the men there was nobody here from the accident; that there was no woman from the train, _nobody_ who might be British.

It wasn't entirely a lie. He didn't know for sure that the amnesic female was British; the woman could very well be French who worked with a lot of English-speaking people; many companies in France spoke English. There was no way to be sure his patient was the one they sought.

But she _had_ come from the train. And she _had_ spoken English. It _was_ possible.

But it was _Holmes_. _That_ Holmes. The unspeakable twists of fate which had brought their families together once before now chose to repeat the event, but this time, the power was in the opposite hands ... his hands.

Feeling a little sick, yet not enough to make him change his mind about his actions, the doctor pulled out an old leather wallet from inside his jacket. Flipping it open, his eyes went immediately to the small photograph of a young woman with long blonde hair and a happy smile.

Stroking a gentle fingertip across the face in the image, he smiled at her as he always did, the memories warming him like long summer evenings.

It had been more than seven years since she died.

Frowning to himself, Thibert folded the leather closed and returned it to his pocket. Now was not the moment to lose sight of what his brain had told him to do. If he were going to continue along this path of action, then he had to move quickly; no telling when Holmes's brother and the other man might return.

If he wanted to get rid of the woman, he had to act soon. He took a deep breath and dug his phone from a pocket. There was a man he knew he could trust to do what he wanted, no questions asked.

Scrolling down through the list of contacts, Thibert located the number he sought. He pressed _call_.

###

Lying back in the bed, her arm up to her chest in a sling and waiting for the x-rays to be developed, she tried once again to push through the fog that continued to swirl around her thoughts. At moments, she almost felt something was appearing, some image or name, but then it faded back to grey. Clearly she needed a better prompt than her own willpower which seemed inexplicably feeble. She needed to get to the places she thought she might know; have a look around, see if anyone knew her in return. She couldn't to do that from a hospital bed in Nevers.

In which case, there was only one avenue of action. She had to get out of this hospital as soon as she possibly could. She already knew where she had to go first, Vichy and _Narcisse_. Wherever and whatever it was.

"The doctor will discuss these films with you," the radiologist laid a large white envelope at her feet on the bed. "Although everything seems to be as it should, Doctor Thibert will need to be sure you are receiving the correct treatment," the technician nodded. "Ask him if you have any questions," she added, helping the porter wheel the bed out of the large but technology-cluttered room.

Getting comfortable but almost wishing she was able to walk, if only to get used to being upright again, she wondered if Thibert would give an answer to one particular question: when could she leave this place? She suspected that he wasn't going to be too keen to throw her out unless she had somewhere to go or someone to claim responsibility for her. Since she had neither of these things at present, convincing the doctor to discharge her in the near future might be a tricky proposition. Perhaps if she were able to demonstrate an extremely rapid recovery...

They had disconnected her saline drip as soon as she had sat up and was able to use a straw in a glass, so there was nothing physically keeping her in bed other than pain and weakness. She had painkillers for the first and could grit her way through the second.

As the porter wheeled her out of the lift, she asked him to stop. Taking it very carefully, she slipped her legs out of the bed and stood, her left hand holding the head-rail as a support.

"I need to feel my feet," she smiled vaguely through her painful and still swollen lips as the man looked askance at her action. Very few patients in this hospital were able to take the initiative and walk when it pleased them. He wasn't entirely sure what he should do.

"Relax," she muttered taking the opportunity for a cautious stretch to unkink her back. Slowly, slowly, they walked their way back towards the intensive care section, the only place the hospital had felt able to put her at such short notice and where she had remained, isolated and relatively forgotten.

Noel Thibert had just returned to the glass-walled unit when he saw her approaching, one arm in a sling, the other resting on the top rail of the bed-head, the flimsy red wristband loose against her pale skin. As a doctor, he was concerned. As the husband of a dead wife, he was strangely pleased. It was going to be easier to rid himself of the woman than he had previously thought. Fixing a conservative expression to his face, he raised an eyebrow as the slowly-moving duo finally made it into the ward.

"This is perhaps not entirely wise," the doctor in him made it impossible to avoid saying this. Whoever the woman was, she was still his patient and he had sworn to do no harm ... "You are barely able to stay vertical, let along walk," he chastised. "If you fall, you will re-injure yourself and be in hospital care for much longer than necessary."

It was as good an opening as any.

"I was going to talk to you about that, Doctor Thibert," she tried to appease him by levering herself carefully back into bed. "How soon do you think I might be able to leave?"

_Leave the hospital? Was she mad?_ She could barely stand. But still ... her request aligned uncannily well with his own plan.

"You are too unwell yet to consider being out of hospital," he folded his arms and set his jaw. "Especially as you have nobody to assist you and nowhere," he added, looking at her from beneath his brows, "to go."

"I remember Vichy," she said, suddenly feeling a desperate need to be away from this place. "_Almost_," she added, honestly. "I _almost_ remember Vichy and I'm certain I'll be able to remember more about myself if I could only get to look around the place – maybe see some familiar landmarks."

"I cannot discharge you voluntarily from this hospital unless you have a place to go where care is guaranteed," Thibert frowned. "_Although_," he paused thoughtfully. "There might be a way."

"_What?_" she was alert to the tone of his voice. It was a tone of possibility. "What?"

"There is a small cottage-hospital just outside of Vichy, in Cusset, where we sometimes send patients requiring only palliative care," Thibert pursed his bottom lip as he thought. "It may be possible," he said, meeting her hopeful gaze. "_May_ be possible for me to have you transferred to Cusset to complete your recovery, but the journey down would be painful one for you and will take at least a couple of hours," Thibert paused, resting his chin in one hand as he looked at her appraisingly. "If I could arrange that, would you be willing to endure the journey? You would have to share an ambulance with another patient."

If she had been able to take a deeper breath, she would have laughed. _Perfect_. It was a perfect plan. "When can I go?" she smiled as far as her injured face would permit.

Taking the deep breath that she could not, Thibert stared at her again as if weighing up a decision.

_He should not do this; she was his patient, she was injured. He should not even be contemplating doing this thing._

"I think we have a transport going down to Cusset today, in fact," Thibert clamped down brutally on his inner misgivings. _They were seeking the wife of ... Holmes ... He would not help them._ He would not help_ that man._

She could hardly believe her good fortune. In the space of fifteen minutes, she had been able to change her current situation entirely to her desire and hopefully for the better.

"I'd better pack," she said, picking up her plastic beaker. "There," she met his eyes. "Packed."

###

The first operating room had a sign on the door which proclaimed it was undergoing renovation. After observing traffic both in and out of _Bloc Opératoire Deux_, the only other theatre currently in use, it became clear that, though there was indeed a surgical procedure underway, they would not discover the identity of the patient for some time. There was only the tiniest porthole-type window in the large swing-doors, not nearly sufficient to show them what they wanted to see.

Looking around, Sherlock spotted the door to the surgical team's gowning rooms. He had an idea. "Wait here," he muttered. "Won't be long."

Sliding unobserved through the silently opening door, the younger Holmes found precisely what he wanted in less than fifteen seconds. In half that time, he had swathed himself in a pale green operating gown, was expertly masked and in full gloved mode as he backed his way into the operating room, hands held high in the air.

The two active surgeons and the three surgical nurses paused their activities and stared at the intruder in disbelief.

Peering in through the small window from the outside, John smacked a hand over his face and groaned. He should have known everything was going too slowly for Sherlock.

Inside the theatre the lead surgeon stared at the unknown interloper with undisguised irritation. "Please _leave_," he instructed. "You are either in the wrong theatre or here at the wrong time. We're busy, go away."

"If this is Madame Navas's hip, then I am in _exactly_ the right place. What are you doing with my patient?" Sherlock's French was every bit as dramatic as his English.

The senior surgeon rested his hands on the side of the operating table. "This is not Madame Navas," he said. "This is Monsieur Wattier's _leg_," he looked down. "His _right_ leg."

"Hip, leg, what is the difference?" Sherlock scowled visibly above his encompassing mask. "When is Navas due in here?" he demanded. "I am a busy man; I have no time to queue for patients. Is there a running sheet anywhere in this godforsaken place?"

"Over here, Doctor," one of the nurses pointed up at a screen on the wall. Not unlike the departures board in an airport, it had a list of names and times logged in the theatre for the rest of the day.

There was clearly no Madame Navas. It was unfortunate he had no reason to ask for yesterday's schedule as well as it might have been very informative indeed.

Absorbing the remainder of information on the board in less than two seconds, Sherlock could see there was no scheduled procedure for any female persons today. Whoever was in the missing bed from intensive care, if it was a female, she wasn't coming here.

The mysterious patient must be elsewhere in the hospital.

"This is typical of the poor administration in this place," Sherlock raised his voice just enough to give himself an unhindered exit as he returned the way he came, shucking the voluminous garments as he did.

John was waiting on the passage outside the operating room. "You _sodding_ maniac," he hissed. "You could have completely ruined the asepsis in that theatre! Whoever is on that table could develop all manner of potentially lethal infections," he paused, fuming. "That was _bloody_ irresponsible."

"I was completely gowned and masked for the full sixteen seconds I was in the room with the patient," he said. "I was never closer than fourteen feet; I touched no-one and nothing, nor was I touched by any member of the team _or_ the patient who is under anaesthetic at this moment," he added. "There is an infinitesimal risk of contamination as they had not yet opened the skin."

Still unsatisfied, John scowled.

"I was also able to ascertain that there is no female scheduled for any form of surgical procedure today, so we can turn our investigations to another of those areas you mentioned."

With a loud sigh, John gave in. "Let's try radiology, then," he suggested.

"West wing, ground-floor," Sherlock recalled the floor plan by the lift. They headed for the stairs.

###

Perhaps fate was on her side for once, she thought, as her bed was once again manoeuvred into one of the industrial-sized lifts. After the swift perusal of her x-ray films, Thibert had pronounced himself satisfied that everything was exactly as he would wish it to be and though she was still in a great deal of pain, all that she really required now was rest and time to heal. What she didn't need was further support for the valuable resources in the intensive care unit.

The doctor had given her two very strong painkillers and tucked a box of the same tablets into one of the pockets of her bed gown. _It was the least he could do_.

"These will numb the pain for the rest of the day," he confirmed. "Do not imagine you are suddenly healed when the pain goes and you think you can move easily without consequence," he added. "You must take every precaution with your injuries for at least the next three weeks."

"I won't need to stay in hospital for the next three weeks?" she asked, wary.

Thibert managed a slight smile. "No," he shook his head. "You can leave once you are able to move a little more freely and are no longer in danger of falling."

The painkillers were indeed powerful and within minutes of taking them, she felt her head grow heavy and her eyes harder to keep open. She struggled but it was a losing battle.

Accompanying the porter as he wheeled the bed and the woman into the lift, Thibert was silent with his own thoughts as they made it down to ground-level, standing by the railed bed as they waited for the private ambulance, a shiny white Citroën wagon, to back its way cautiously towards the glassed-in entrance. Another sleeping patient in a similar wheeled bed was already there, waiting for collection and transport to the palliative wards of Cusset.

The ambulance driver emerged from the cab and walked towards the doctor. Taking a swift look at the duo to be transported, he raised his eyebrows. "Your phone message wasn't very specific," he said looking between the two wheeled beds. In one, an old man, serenely asleep, pale, relaxed; clearly in his last months of life. In the other, a much younger woman, her face viciously bruised and puffy, her arm cast and in a sling, bruises on her hands. Her eyelids fluttering restlessly through a drug-induced somnolence. "Which one do you want me lose?" he asked softly, a cold expression on his face. "As if I couldn't work it out."

"The woman," Thibert breathed the words, his lips barely moving. "Just take her to one of the main hospitals in Lyon and leave her in a corridor," he added. "After what I gave her, she'll sleep through until tonight," he sighed. "She won't be a bother to anyone. Nobody will believe her story when she wakes up."

"You're the boss," the driver said, accepting the envelope of admittance instructions for the old man and the enclosed wad of folded Euro notes. "I'll drop the old guy off and then take the lady for a little drive in the countryside."

"She is not to be harmed, you understand," Thibert rested his hand on the driver's arm. "Not hurt, just ... misdirected."

The driver's smile was all teeth. "Consider it done," he nodded. "Better get my deliveries aboard and I'll be off."

###

It was much easier to stroll into the radiology department than the surgical area and even John was surprised as how lax the security was around here: they probably thought everything was too big to steal and therefore why worry about it? None of the doors were locked and most of the rooms were unattended. Clearly this department did not expect a great deal of traffic, human or otherwise, through its doors.

"Yes? Can I help you?" a woman's voice had John turning on his heel with a ready smile on his face, prepared for an immediate charm-offensive.

The female emerging from behind the screened-off area wore an expression which suggested charm was unlikely to be the most effective of tools. "Yes?" she repeated, a little more sharply.

"Good afternoon, _Madame_," Sherlock took in the steel-grey hair, bunned to within a micron of existence, the solid black jacket and trousers beneath a pristine white lab-coat. The lack of cosmetics, the pinched mouth. He smiled. "You have a wonderful radiology unit," he said, admiringly. "A PSI's 300m-diameter synchrotron? With the new nanostructured gratings to describe dark-field images?" the tall man lifted both eyebrows in appreciation. "You may have to call security to get me to leave."

Her eyes opening a little wider, the radiologist relaxed. This one knew what he was talking about and sounded like he had pets of his own. He obviously wasn't a patient. Despite her dislike of strangers, she couldn't resist a genuine enthusiast.

"You are here to ask me something," the woman's stance eased a little. "What is it you want?"

Turning towards his companion, Sherlock raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

Taking the hint, John stepped forward. "Have there been any accident or trauma victims in here in the last twenty-four hours?" he asked. "Anyone who might have come from the train wreck?"

The radiologist frowned. "I have only just arrived, but this hospital does not admit accident victims," she said, her scowl deepening.

"It is very important for us to confirm that," Sherlock gave her a hopeful look. "Please?"

With a roll of her eyes and a faint sigh, she walked around to a computer monitor. Tapping a few keys, she called up a list of all films developed in the last twenty-four hours.

"_Osteoporosis_," she muttered. "Tumour, arthritis, brittle-bone, tumour ... and ..." she paused. "That's odd."

"_Odd?_" Sherlock was interested. Odd was good. Odd was what they wanted.

"Several digital films of ..." she looked at the printed details to one side of the screen. "Accident victim," she nodded briefly in surprise. "First ones were yesterday," she tapped a couple of keys. "And several more earlier today," she made a face. "Female, unknown age but fully adult by the looks of these," she pressed her lips together. "Skull, shoulder, arm, chest," she made a face. "Bit of a mess but not life-threatening," she looked up. "Is that what you wanted to know?"

"Is there a name?" John held his breath.

Peering even more closely at the monitor, the radiologist shook her head. "Not that I could give you those kind of details even if I had them," she looked back at the blonde man. "But I don't seem to have them. The name on the records is Jeanne DuPont."

"_Jeanne DuPont?_ That's the patient's name?" despite his unarticulated hopes, John felt horribly disappointed. The patient was a French woman. He didn't know what he had been hoping for, but this wasn't it.

Sherlock turned to his friend, a faint smile on his lips. "_Jeanne DuPont_ is the French equivalent of the American _Jane Doe_," he stated. "The patient is an unnamed female, not sure why, but given the injuries suggested by the images, there's a strong possibility of damage to the right prefrontal lobe," he watched as the doctor's eyes widened. "Yes, John," Sherlock nodded. "Post-traumatic _amnesia_."

Thanking the radiologist for her time, they left the ground-level department and stood beside one of the large windows allowing what was left of the afternoon light to tint the passageways a dull gold.

"If there is someone here from the train accident, which appears to be increasingly likely, then why did Thibert tell us the opposite?" John bit his lower lip. "It makes no sense for him to lie; someone must know that a train-victim is here and sooner or later come looking for them, so why did he lie to us?"

There was no immediate reply.

Turning to look at his silent flatmate, John realised Sherlock was staring out through the window towards the nearby ambulance-bay where the second of two wheeled beds was just being loaded into a white Citroën.

The younger Holmes looked thoughtful as he gazed at the medical person clearly overseeing the patient-transfer. Even from the back it looked like ...

"_Thibert_," Sherlock started to run along the corridor. "He's sending two patients away from here," he yelled as his long legs gathered speed.

"And why is that making us run?" John flung himself in his partner's footsteps.

"_One of them is very probably the accident victim_," he shouted as he sprang out through the ambulance-bay doors, just as the Citroën vanished around the corner and down the side lane.

"Where is that ambulance taking those patients, Doctor Thibert?" Sherlock levelled his breathing as John caught up.

Turning slowly to face the both of them, Noel Thibert smiled an innocent smile. "Not that it's any of your business," he said. "But it's going to Cusset," his smile widened. "To our sister-hospital where many of our terminal patients go when they are beyond more than palliative care."

Sherlock watched the man's eyes, his expression, the language of his hands.

Thibert was telling the truth; the ambulance was indeed destined for Cusset, but he wouldn't have told them that if he had anything to hide.

Perhaps the mystery patient wasn't in the Citroën after all.

Heaving a deeply unsatisfying breath, the younger Holmes scowled blackly. It seemed they were back to square one.

###

The journey from Nevers to Vichy along the N7 took around two hours, and he didn't push the speed limit, though neither of his passengers would have noticed if he had: they slept the entire way. It was well into early evening when the driver pulled his ambulance into the parking bay outside the vehicle-entrance of Cusset Hospital.

Greeting the intake nurse at the entrance, the Citroën-driver smiled. "Got a patient from Nevers," he said. "I'll just go and powder my nose and be back to sign the paperwork in a minute," he added, hurrying towards the men's facilities.

Opening the rear door to the customised vehicle, the nurse noted the twin passengers, both wearing Hospital _Colbert_ wristbands. Clearly the driver had meant to say there were _two_ patients from Nevers, not one. Waving a brace of porters over, the nurse had the Citroën's rear ramp down and both beds unloaded and wheeled into the hospital before the driver returned.

"Ah, no," he muttered. "Only the old guy is to come here," he said. "The woman is meant to go elsewhere."

"Where elsewhere?" the admitting nurse flipped over the pages of the documents. "All the documentation you have here states _Cusset_," she added. "Where else were you expected to take the female patient?"

"_Hospices Civils de Lyon_," the driver stuttered, caught on the back foot by the unexpected question. It was the second largest university hospital in France; everybody in the southern part of the country probably went there sooner or later.

"Then where are the admittance documents?" the nurse demanded. "No way will _Civils_ take a patient destined for Cusset," she shook her head. "Show me the paperwork before you take her anywhere."

"Of course, Madame," the driver relaxed and smiled. "It's in the cab with me; I'll go and fetch it for you now."

_Drivers_. Turning her back, the better to read the paperwork from the lights above the entranceway, the admitting nurse wondered where these drivers came from. Sometimes you had to wonder if any of them had any training at all.

Hearing the sound of the Citroën's engine being unduly revved she turned back, only to see the rear-lights of the wagon moving rapidly away and out into the road beyond.

Her jaw dropped in absolute disbelief.

There was something very odd going on here. Perhaps it was a matter for the Sûreté.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

_The Tenth Body – Finding Narcisse – A Rationale for Haste – Anthea Does Her Job – Directions – Hopes for a Speedy Recovery – Convincing John – The Leaving of Cusset._

#

#

Alsan, the large French multinational conglomerate had been designing and producing extraordinarily fast trains since 1978. The organisation's headquarters in Levallois-Perret, in the Avenue André Malraux and from which the executive offices had a lovely view of the Seine.

Sitting in the swanky offices of Alsan's CEO, Jacques Decour, Gilles de Chabot was not in the least impressed, wanting only for the man's dithering to end so that he might speak with the engineers and designers of the TGV.

"Always delighted to assist the Sûreté," the man stood, waving his hands expansively. "We here at Alsan take our social responsibilities very seriously and do our best to maintain the highest public image," he nodded at the view from the windows.

De Chabot, with several family-members living in the seventh arondissment, found the man's _nouveau riche_ sentiments plebeian and more than a little hollow. He was also wasting their time, although Claude, now on his second café-au-lait did not seem in the least put out.

"And the Sûreté is most appreciative of your organisation's willingness to help us, Monsieur Decour, but it is with your engineers we really must speak, and soon. We have a long return journey ahead."

"Of course, of course," Decour's smile never wavered as the door to his palatial roof-top eyrie admitted two older men who each had the slightly distracted look about them of fish out of water. By the expression on their faces as they stared around Decour's office, it was clear this was rarefied territory.

He would get little of use from them up here. He needed them comfortable and relaxed.

Standing, de Chabot and the now-reluctant Sergeant Moreau shook hands with the men, identified respectively as Monsieur Bache and Monsieur Maisel, both senior engineers of the train which derailed outside Nevers. It was clear they were terrified the finger of blame would be pointed in their direction.

"_Gentlemen_," de Chabot smiled easily. "We need to see drawings and plans of the train; can you take us to them?"

With an inaudible sigh of relief, both men smiled as their shoulders relaxed. Opening the door, Maisel indicated they should follow him to the lift, which took the party down to the third floor drafting office.

On one side of the long room, massive tables held a plethora of plans, blueprints and drawings-in-progress. On the other, a series of smaller, glass-boxed offices held wide-drawered cased files. The atmosphere was busy though there was an undertone of disquiet and general unhappiness. Someone was to blame for the recent tragedy at Nevers but everyone hoped it wasn't going to be them.

The Series 23000 TGV-PSE was a sophisticated and complex piece of technology, its safety and performance standards evolving with every review, every upgrade. Despite the fact that its top speed of 300 kph was faster than any other commercial land-transport, the TGV was safer to travel in than the average bus. There was no reason for the Paris-Lyons train to have become derailed in such catastrophic form, except it had, and passengers had died. There were several simultaneous investigations and not just on the train itself.

Laying out the schematic of the first two carriages, de Chabot added a transparent overlay on top which detailed the approximate location of the bodies as they were discovered by the rescue teams.

He pointed to the diagram and looked between the engineers. "There should be ten bodies in the first carriage but we think we have the remains of only nine," he made a sour face. "I need you to tell me where the tenth body might have come to rest given the original seating arrangement, the nature of the damage and the final position of the carriages," he paused, checking the understanding of the two men. "Where should we be looking for the missing corpse?"

The eyebrows of both engineers dipped into simultaneous sharp frowns as they peered down at the logistical problem. Leaving them to it for the moment, de Chabot nodded Moreau over to him. "Any messages from headquarters?" he asked. "Anything new?"

Moreau shook his head. "Only to confirm what we already believe," he said. "That one of the passengers in the first carriage, probably one of the children in the family group, was able to make it out of there and is either roaming around lost, or has gone to ground with someone who is helping them. We are already compiling a list of everyone who was involved in the rescue effort so that we can confirm and cross-index who the rescued passengers were and where they all went after they were taken from the train; it's a lot messier than anyone imagined and there appear to be passengers all over the place. There were nearly four-hundred people involved, so it's going to take a little time."

About to make the retort that Nevers wasn't that big a town, de Chabot turned at the sound of disagreement behind him.

Apparently the two engineers were of different opinion. "Yes?" he said.

Bache stood, still staring down at the seating plan; he frowned, looked at his colleague and shook his head. "There is no way," he said, "that anyone in this front part of the first carriage could have walked away unaided," he said. "Anyone sitting in these seats," he indicated where the family group was and where the two women had been seated, "if they survived at all, would have been seriously injured," he scowled again.

"Yet I disagree," Maisel looked faintly apologetic. "There is just a chance," he said, "a very _small_ chance that the reason you cannot locate the tenth body is because one of these survived," he pointed to the two seats near the front of the first carriage.

The seats where the two women had been sitting. Where the wife of Mycroft Holmes had been sitting when she died.

"The way the section wall at the end of the first carriage has been forced backwards in a concertina form tells me that whoever was sitting _here_," he jabbed a blunt finger at the aisle seat. "Would have been thrown clear of the compaction and come to rest directly against the wall itself. Hurt, most likely, but probably cushioned by the very momentum that caused the death of the other passenger."

The four men looked at one another. Claude Moreau raised his eyebrows and suddenly craved a cigarette.

If the engineer was correct, the passenger who had been in that particular aisle seat, Tallis Varon, might still be alive somewhere. But if she were alive, why hadn't she come forward to identify herself? Why hadn't she been interviewed in Nevers hospital?

If Tallis Varon was alive, where was she?

###

Such a wonderful shade of blue they were, striking, cobalt-blue eyes. A compelling gaze regarding her from beneath a pair of elegant dark eyebrows. Fine eyelashes veiling their light in one moment only to reveal a stirring intensity in the next. Beautiful blue eyes. She smiled in her sleep, then found herself wondering whose they were. A man's eyes; she could tell from the shape of the eyebrows they were a man's. She felt a powerful affinity to that gaze, whoever the owner was. It was clear she knew those eyes and the man behind them ... but his face was hard to see, difficult to make out. She reached harder for the image, tried to see the whole face, but it faded … vanished.

She woke up and found herself in semi-darkness. This wasn't the back of a small ambulance, but a much wider space in a building. Blinking a few times, she rubbed the blur away with her good hand. Her mouth was salt-dry and she wondered if there was anyone around who might fetch her a drink of water but it appeared she had been left alone to sleep.

Moving experimentally in the hospital bed, she found that yes, everything still ached like crazy but there was also a marked improvement. Thibert had said not to imagine she was healed when the pain eased, but she definitely felt a lot better. Perhaps the several hours of sleep had helped.

There was background noise around her and she realised she was in a wide corridor rather than in a room. That was why it was dim, there were no windows. This had to be Cusset Hospital in Vichy; she had slept through the entire journey.

Feeling not only a need for a drink, but also a bathroom, she lifted the light covering away and struggled upright, feeling just a bit groggy and out of sorts.

There had to be a bathroom around here somewhere.

Realising she had nothing on her feet, not even socks, the shining vinyl was cool beneath her toes as she walked, very carefully along the corridor towards the nearest noise. Her corridor intersected with a much larger, much more brightly lit one, and, she smiled in relief, a nurse's desk not ten meters away.

"Hello," she caught the nurse's attention. "Could you tell me where the nearest bathroom is please?"

"Ah," the nurse smiled briefly. "Awake at last," she said. "Whatever they gave you at Colbert, it certainly had you out for long enough."

"I think Doctor Thibert didn't want me in pain during the journey," she said, pausing uncomfortably. "Bathroom?"

"Straight down from here," the nurse turned and pointed away from her. "On the left," she paused. "Should you even be out of bed?" she asked. "You look as if you've been hit by a bus."

Opting to say nothing, she smiled as best she could and began the slow walk to the women's bathroom.

It was the first time she had had any opportunity to seriously examine her face.

It was a frightening, horrible mess.

Bruising of black and darkest purple covered her features from one side to the other. There was a tight, shiny lump on the right temple. Both her eyes were completely black and though they didn't actually hurt that much, they looked awful. Her nose, beneath a small white splint adhered to either side of the bridge, was swollen and bruised a dark red. The entire right side of her face was a massive slab of purple and red and her lips were sore and puffy, especially on the right. Peeling her robe gingerly open at the neck, she saw more bruising all the way down her chest and shoulder. It made her go a little shivery and was all a bit too much for comfortable assessment.

A horrible mess indeed.

Steeling herself, she forced a more thorough and objective examination of her appearance in case it might spark a memory. A name, something from her past. _Anything_. It was an uneasy sensation, assessing a face you can't remember seeing before and yet whose topography you have lived with all your life.

It was hard to tell with all the damage, but she looked late thirties or early forties, she supposed, feeling the faint lines on her forehead with a gentle fingertip. Her eyes, peering out from the surrounding blackness had a chocolaty-brown iris with flecks of green and a greenish band around the outside. Her hair, a foul messy tangle, still streaked with blood, was also a dark brunette, as were her eyebrows. Her lips, apart from the bruising looked full and more used to smiling than frowning, judging by the tiny laughter lines at each corner.

She supposed she might be considered reasonably good-looking although it wasn't easy to tell right now.

Walking slowly back to the nurse's station, she saw two other nurses in conversation, one of whom looked up and smiled, relieved, when they saw her plodding towards them.

"Thought you'd wandered off," the nurse said. "Come on, we were waiting for a bed to clear so we can put you in a ward: we need to get you lying down so we can take some obs."

"This is Vichy, yes?" she asked, still not actually sure she was here.

"This is Vichy, _yes_," the nurse accompanied her into a small room with four beds. Three of them contained sleeping old ladies.

The nurse walked her patient to the empty one and pulled back the pristine covers. "We're still not sure why you've been sent down to us from Colbert, actually," the nurse looked at her for an answer as she helped the woman into the bed.

She told the truth. "Nevers City hospital was full with people from the train accident and so I was put in Hospital _Colbert_, but I asked to come to Vichy so they let me," she said. "I was told I don't need to stay in very long; that I can leave as soon as I'm safe to walk."

"That's true enough," the nurse wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around her left arm. "Although the doctors are going to want to verify Colbert's diagnosis, just to be on the safe side, but the way you're already getting around by yourself, it shouldn't be long."

"There's only one small problem," lying back in the bed, she made a face then winced as her bruised flesh complained.

"And what's that?" the nurse held a stethoscope to the pulse at her inner elbow, assessing the pressure there. It was quite good, considering the drugs she must have had and what there must surely be of pain.

"I don't know who I am or where I live," her new patient said, quietly. "All I know is there's a place near here called _Narcisse_ which is somehow connected to me. That's all I remember since the accident."

The nurse looked at her to check she wasn't making some sort of dreadful joke. "Is this a problem from the accident?" she asked. "Did Doctor Thibert know this?"

"Yes, he did," she said, warily. "He didn't want me to leave without knowing who I was or where I was to go, but I know it has to be around here somewhere … do you know of a place called Narcisse?"

"_Narcisse?_" the old lady in the bed opposite had awakened and was listening to the conversation. "I know exactly where that is," she said, quite enjoying the fact that all of a sudden she had a very interested audience of two.

###

John had demanded a break to get some food and a drink before he went any further. They hadn't stopped all day and he was starving. Sherlock fretted at this unnecessary loss of time, but knew his flatmate well enough to realise bullying would do no good. And so he sat, watching the blonde man wade through two banana crêpes with coffee _and_ cream as he sipped on a small _café-noir_.

"But what I can't understand," John mumbled around a mouthful of hot, syrupy banana. "Is why Thibert would lie about a patient who had been on the train in the first place," he said, shaking his head slowly. "It makes no sense."

"It makes no sense because we lack all the salient facts," Sherlock had a purposeful look on his face as he reached for his Blackberry.

John stopped chewing to watch, a horrified expression clouding his features. "You can't be ringing Mycroft for information," he said. "Not with all the horrors he must be going through," the blonde doctor added. "You _can't_, Sherlock."

"Mycroft has access to data that I do not," the younger Holmes pressed the _call_ button. "Besides which, I know my brother well enough to be quite sure he would expect this of me," he added, waiting for his call to be answered.

It was. By Anthea. _Ah_.

"Anthea, Hello. I need a full background check on one Noel Thibert, T.H.I.B.E.R.T., currently a medical practitioner at Hospital Colbert in Nevers, France," Sherlock didn't even attempt to explain his reasons. "Please make this request a priority and text me the data as soon as you have it, thank you." He hung up and returned to his _café_.

"Jeez, you're a rude bastard sometimes," John sipped from his own steaming cup.

"My brother must be under exceptional strain if he has transferred his incoming calls to his assistant," Sherlock acknowledged softly. "However, this cannot wait."

"Christ's sake," John dropped his fork, a sick look on his face. "Cate's _dead_, Sherlock," he murmured. "What do you expect him to be?" he looked down at the remains of his meal, suddenly not hungry. "Besides, what's the rush?"

"You have worked enough cases with me now to know I do nothing without rational cause," Sherlock continued to sip the black liquid, his eyes fixed upon some distant, unseeable focus. "Even haste."

"Then tell me the rational for haste right now," John pushed his unfinished crêpes away, his appetite entirely vanished. "Tell me, _right now_, why there is this god-awful rush when nothing we can do will bring her back."

Finishing his coffee, the younger Holmes replaced the cup in its saucer with a deeply thoughtful expression. Inhaling briefly, he lifted his curiously pale eyes to meet his friend's gaze.

"I do not believe bringing my sister-in-law back is the issue," he said, finally, a distant air playing across his features.

John looked at him, clearly at sea. Sherlock sighed.

"Bringing Cate back is not the issue because I do not think she has _gone_," he said, finally, wrinkling his nose at the vagueness of such a statement.

"Not gone? Cate not gone? What do you mean ..?" John struggled with the possible connotations of his friend's cryptic statement. "What do you mean you don't think she's gone?"

Taking a deep breath and leaning forward, fixing the doctor with a look one might give to a particularly dense student. "I suspect Cate is still alive, John."

###

Mycroft had indeed redirected all his incoming phone calls to Anthea, just as he had also handed her complete control of all his emails and texts. He knew his intuitive filters were clouded and unstable, an instability brought about by sheer emotional overload. He would have been a fool to imagine them otherwise. Though he had commented upon his brother's emotional weakness during the Adler affair, the elder Holmes was not such a naïve as to assume all his strengths were located in the intellect. There was a special role for instinct and normally, his were honed to perfection.

But not now.

Now they blew about his mind as cobwebs caught in a storm; reft and assailed, they hung in drifting shreds, unable to withstand the violence of his own emotions.

And until he could rely upon them once again, he had invoked Anthea as their understudy; let her intuition act in place of his own.

For just a little while.

While the agony was at its height. While he could scarcely breathe from second to second as his chest crushed inwards with the overwhelming loss and the terrible, _unspeakable_ need to roar at the intolerable injustice of it all. While the pain was a solid block around his lungs and filled the spaces of his mind with a rage so black it would obliterate all about him if he gave it but a moment's rein.

He sucked down a burning breath and felt his heartbeat slow. For just a little while.

And Anthea, knowing this, said nothing and did her job.

It was growing dark, but he could not go home, not yet. Every report on his desk was a thread that bound him to normality. Mycroft knew he could not willingly abandon this thin connection between him and sanity. Not yet. He could not face his children before he had formed an anchor from his own grief. He could not go home.

###

"It's an old farmhouse on the river just outside of Saint-Yorre," the old woman folded her hands on her chest and nodded. "About ten kilometres from here," she added. "A nice place; old Bertrand Amar used to keep ducks there."

The nurse looked from the elderly patient back to her newest one; she raised her eyebrows. "Does that make any sense to you?" she asked, rolling up her stethoscope and tucking it into a capacious pocket.

It suddenly made perfect sense.

She distinctly remembered that _Narcisse_ was a new home, that someone ... that _she_ hadn't lived in it yet, but had only bought it recently ... or something like that. It was a little fuzzy. She tried to form a picture of the place in her mind's eye but could not. Odd that there was no image in her thoughts, only a name and the knowledge that it had only been recently purchased.

"I must go there," she whispered desperately as the nurse took her temperature. "How soon can I leave?"

"You're not going anywhere until the doctors are sure your head-injury has been properly examined and that you aren't likely to injure yourself any further," examining the resultant digital read-out the nurse nodded to herself. "You've got a flick of temperature which is entirely unsurprising, so lie down and I'll have the night-rounds doctor to come and talk to you shortly," she said. "Have you eaten recently?"

She tried to remember the last time she'd eaten and realised it was probably over a day before. Not that she felt particularly hungry even now.

"Not recently," she admitted, her stomach deciding it wanted a say and grumbled emptily.

"You've missed diner, but I'll get you something from the kitchen," the nurse smiled. "Won't be long, so just rest for a while."

As soon as the nurse's footsteps faded away, she turned to the old woman. "Tell me about Narcisse, please," she begged. "How do I get there?"

The old lady smiled gently and told her exactly what she wanted to know.

###

Noel Thibert replaced the old phone onto its receiver, his fingers resting on the cool plastic surface as his mind examined the ramifications of what he now knew.

The ambulance driver had told him of the problems at Cusset and what had happened with the woman; like it or not, she was now in the care of the nursing staff there and not lost in the system of some Lyon hospital as they'd agreed. There was nothing he could do about it.

Understanding that the driver had left in something of a hurry, Thibert felt it might be possible the local Sûreté would be called in if there were anything suspicious. He should contact the reception at Cusset to ensure everything was as usual, to make sure nothing looked or sounded remotely suspicious.

Lifting the phone back up, he dialled the Cusset number, waiting for a response. It came in the form of a nursing sister who was relieved to hear from him, especially when he was able to confirm the woman's story of the overflow from Nevers Hospital.

"Colbert will charge the medical cost to the Department of Health," he said, but advised that the woman was to be encouraged to leave as soon as possible. He did not want her hanging around in case ... he took care not to say _in case anyone came looking for her again_.

"Certainly, Doctor Thibert," the nurse thought she understood his desire for a speedy recovery as it would put unwanted pressure on their already cramped little hospital. "I'll ensure the patient leaves as soon as she is able, which should not be long, in any case."

"Let me know me when she has gone," he said, ending the call.

Thibert chewed his lip; this was becoming more complicated than he'd planned. If his actions were put under genuine scrutiny, he'd be hard-pressed to provide a logical explanation. It might even put his job at risk.

He didn't like that idea. He didn't like it at all.

###

Setting his jaw and inhaling slowly, John nodded. "Okay," he said. "Convince me."

Resting on both arms and leaning sharply forward, Sherlock's expression became penetrating. "Thibert lied," he said, as if that was all he needed.

"Yes," John nodded in agreement. "We know he lied, we have the evidence of the x-ray films, but how does that prove _Cate's_ still alive? It might be anyone."

"Think, John, _think_," Sherlock ran harried fingers through his hair. "Why would the man lie? He was telling the complete truth right up until the moment I said the name, Cate _Holmes_."

"And?" John resumed sipping his coffee.

"And so there are only _two_ reasons why Thibert would lie to anyone once he knew her name," Sherlock paused, enumerating. "One, because she survived the train wreck but died later, after the x-rays and for some unknown reason while in his care and he didn't want anyone, especially her brother-in-law, to know about it. But if that were the case then, no matter how unpleasant a task, Thibert's an experienced doctor; he would have had to have given such news many, many times, especially in an institution which specialises in the care of the terminally ill. There would be no reason for him to balk at giving us such information."

"And the second reason?" John sat back, thinking.

Sherlock took a deep breath. "That's Cate's alive; that Thibert knows, or at the very least _suspects_ he knows who she is but for some inexplicable reason does not want her to be found by us, possibly by anyone," he shook his head again. "I don't know why he would want to keep her from her family, hence my request to Anthea."

"Sherlock," John looked suddenly horrified. "You have to tell Mycroft: he needs to know this."

"Tell my brother _what_, John?" Sherlock's face twisted into a dark scowl. "That I have made certain deductions about Cate's situation but am yet without concrete evidence? That I believe my analysis of the situation to be accurate yet lack any thread of proof? Is this what you would have me tell him, John? _Is it?_"

"He's probably out of his mind with grief, Sherlock," John shook his head. "You can't leave him hanging if you have a way to stop it."

"And what if I am _wrong_?" the younger Holmes slammed his fist onto the table, making the cups jump, his stare gimlet-sharp. "What if I am wrong and I raise Mycroft's hopes only to have to dash them down again?" Sherlock closed his eyes and shook his head. "I will not risk it without something more concrete to offer," his voice was virtually a whisper. "No matter how absurd it may sound, I prefer not be responsible for additional suffering on Mycroft's part."

Absorbing this; absorbing the intensity of expression upon his friend's face, the way a small muscle flickered at his jaw exactly as did his brother's, John realised Sherlock was genuinely rattled. The only other time he'd seen the man like this was at Baskerville. He so desperately wanted to be right, but lacked even the tiniest fragment of evidence. The profound relationship between the brothers Holmes, usually so well-hidden beneath the occasional broadside of sarcasm and personal invective, was suddenly, achingly visible.

_Very well_. "Then we'd better go find whatever you need to be sure," he said, standing, a stubborn set to his mouth. "Let's go."

"Not so easy to do," a crooked little smile curved Sherlock's mouth. "There's more to this than meets the eye."

"You think there's some sort of situation between Thibert and ... who? _Cate?_" John raised his eyebrows and sank back into his chair.

"Between Thibert and my brother, perhaps," Sherlock brooded. "Something in Thibert's past; some point of convergence between Mycroft and a French doctor practicing medicine in the Auvergne."

"No idea," John made a doubtful face. "But if Cate is alive then where would she be? If those x-rays really were hers, then she's too badly hurt to be wandering around – she has to be receiving medical care somewhere."

"But not here, I think," Sherlock leaned back, half-closing his eyes as his mind whirled through the ramifications of the notion. "And despite Thibert's admission that the ambulance we saw was taking patients to the hospital in Cusset, I still believe it has something to do with Cate," he closed his eyes completely. "I need to think."

"And we need to decide what we're going to do for the night," John looked around them. "Clearly there's a lot of stuff we don't know yet, and we can't just call Greg Lestrade for help, and we're not going to get this done tonight, so we need to find a place to stay and then start fresh in the morning."

"Here," Sherlock handed over a colourful business-card featuring the _Hôtel de Vaux_. "350 meters _that_ way," Sherlock pointed over John's shoulder. "There was a pile of cards at the hospital reception desk. I suggest we get a room and then find out where Thibert lives," he said. "I want to have a look around."

The Hôtel de Vaux was exactly where it was supposed to be; a small-town, family-owned little hotel. Nothing fancy and already quite full given the influx of visitors since the accident. In fact, there was only one room left.

"We'll take it," Sherlock hadn't even asked what it was and left John to deal with the registration as he looked through the hotel's _brochure des services_.

Waving the key in the air, John wore a happy smile. "Only the most expensive room in the place," he grinned looking for the door with the matching number.

Inside there were two Queen-sized beds, a vast and sparkling but somewhat antiquated bathroom and a very modern TV. A tiny kitchenette held court in one corner of the very large room and the refrigerator was stocked with a range of comestibles, milk and fruit juice. There was even a small loaf of bread and a box of eggs. John was pleased. At least they wouldn't starve to death.

"I need a laptop," Sherlock said, observing the internet cable connection. "Stay here," he said. "Won't be long."

While he waited, John emptied his pockets of the few supplies he'd managed to purchase at the hotel reception, clearly experienced in catering for disorganised travellers.

Toothpaste, toothbrushes, a packet of disposable safety razors, a small canister of shaving cream, even some deodorant, although the fragrance was a shade flamboyant for his taste. Filling the kettle and hunting for tea-bags, he turned on the television and tracked down an English-speaking news channel. Clearly the hotel had some form of cable TV as there seemed to be an endless number of channels. Eventually, he located the BBC World News. Leaving the sound of British voices hanging in the air behind him, he explored the rest of the room. It was all a little spartan, but everything was immaculately clean and smelled faintly of lavender. The place gleamed and felt immensely comfortable.

Lying back against a stacked pile of pillows on his chosen bed, the doctor sipped tea and watched the news.

The door opened and Sherlock returned carrying a small Dell laptop and assorted cables. The rig looked new, but not brand-new. John raised his eyebrows.

"Eldest son of the hotel owner," the younger Holmes said by way of explanation as he plugged the device in, connecting the DSL cable and powering it up. "Tried to borrow it, then offered to rent it, but he wasn't interested until I offered him twice its worth in cash and now it's ours."

"Everything's in French?" John peered across at the distant screen.

"Only for a second, John," Sherlock observed, entering the computer's preferences and changing the entire works to English.

Quickly heading to Google, Sherlock initiated the first of several searches, the subject for each identical: _Noel Thibert_.

"Tea would be nice," he said.

###

Doctor Salman had come to see her not long after a very makeshift dinner – some rather tired chicken sandwiches with a handful of grapes, but her hunger had been such that it disappeared in moments, her tender jaw notwithstanding. The nurses had also given her a small pot of tea and the twin pleasures of reduced pain _and_ hot tea made the entire evening almost bearable.

And then the doctor had arrived.

By the expression on his face, she deduced he was not entirely happy with her presence in his hospital.

"Doctor Thibert should never have sent you down here," he muttered as his fingers felt around her jaw and cheekbones. Though his touch was gentle, it still hurt. She tried not to wince away from his touch, but she couldn't help it.

"That hurts," she hissed as his fingers probed beneath her skin.

"Which is another reason you should not be here," Salman murmured. "You are an accident victim in a palliative hospital," he said. "We do not have the facilities to ensure your best welfare."

"Doctor Thibert said I could leave as soon as I could walk without falling over," she said, managing to hold still as the older man's fingers felt around her shoulder and arm, biting her lip so as not to cry out.

"Doctor Thibert is a fool, in that case," he said. "You should be in a hospital which caters for post-trauma recovery," he frowned and shook his head. "Cusset is not the best place for you," he added, standing and staring down at her. "I think I will have to return you to Nevers; I'm sorry, but there we are."

She could not go all the way back to where she started ... not when she was so near to a place she almost remembered... that she _almost_ knew. _They could not send her back_.

"If you prefer," she said. "I will discharge myself and leave if I am causing you a problem, there's no need to send me back to Nevers."

"My dear young woman." The doctor looked down at her as he concluded his examination. "You are hardly well enough to be walking around _inside_ the hospital, let alone _outside_," he shook his head again. "No," he said. "You still require hospital care, just not at _this_ hospital," he smiled tiredly. "Don't worry; I shall have the nursing staff make all the arrangements for you in the morning. There is nothing we want more than for you to recover your health as soon as possible. Rest now," he added, gently patting her hand. "We'll fix everything up in the morning."

Her stomach a tightening mass of knots, she lay in the dim light of the quiet ward and wondered what to do. There was no way she wanted to leave Vichy now, not after having come so close to her goal.

"What are you going to do, my dear?" the old woman in the bed opposite looked at her, black beady eyes shining faintly in the reflective lights.

"I do not want to return to Nevers, where I have nothing and nobody," she said, looking at her fingers. Strong fingers. Hands that _did_ something. Perhaps she would find out what it was at the place that hung in her mind. _Narcisse_.

"Are you brave?" the old lady asked. "Can you deal with pain?"

Was she brave? Could she manage outside the hospital? Care for herself in the condition she was in?

"Yes," she nodded slowly. "I can and I will. I must find out why this place is so important to me ... I must go there."

"Then come here, my dear," the old lady beckoned with a finger, pointing down towards a drawer at her bedside. "My daughter left me some cash in case I needed anything," she said. "But I give it to you to get a taxi to the farm and I wish you well of it."

There was a hard lump in her throat as she left her bed. "I don't know when, or if I will ever be able to repay you," she said. "But I will accept your offer with the most grateful of thanks." The small pile of Euro notes felt warm in her hand. "Now all I have to do is find some clothes," she said. "And try and dress myself."

"There's a nurse's cloakroom just down the corridor," the old lady smiled wickedly, clearly enjoying playing the villain for once. "They leave all their outside clothes in there when they change for ward-duty," she said. "I'm sure if you timed it right, you could find yourself an outfit that would do until you got home."

_Home_. Until she got _home_. Her heart pounded in her aching chest. Peering into the corridor beyond the silent ward, she listened for any sound of footsteps or voices. Nothing but silence as the hospital began another night. Looking for the described cloakroom, she saw a closed door, _Staff Only_.

Without a backward glance, she entered, observing the rows of lockers but especially the coats and shoes. Given her enfeebled condition, it took several minutes to find a coat big enough to cover her and still have room for her sling. A pair of slip-on shoes took less time to locate, but she persevered.

Inside five minutes, she was respectfully dressed. All she had to do was walk out the door, but instead, she walked back to the ward, approaching the old woman's bed. "I will do my best to get this money back to you," she said. "I promise."

"Good luck to you," the lady smiled faintly. "May God be at your side."

Squeezing the hand that lay limply upon the bedcover, she turned and made her way back out into the corridor, hoping against hope that nobody would stop her; that she could make it all the way to an exit without being caught. It seemed an unlikely feat, even though the hospital had settled down for the night. But she walked slowly, ploddingly towards the lift at the end of the hall, her body unable to comply with the desire for a speedier exit.

Ten meters. _Five_.

The fingers of her left hand were shaking as they brushed against the _down_ button.

The lift took forever to arrive, its groaning clanking progress announcing to the entire building that someone was moving about.

Pressing the button for the ground-floor, she counted the minutes as the doors closed _infinitesimally_ slowly, but then there was movement and she felt the floor shift beneath her feet. As the doors re-opened, she felt the cool breeze of the night in the hospital foyer.

Summoning up her best acting skills, she straightened, forcing herself to walk as briskly as she could towards the exit, hiding her face under a hand as she pretended to sneeze. Anything that masked her bruises was better than nothing.

"_Night_." She called to the receptionist as she made it to the door.

Passing through the heavy glass entrance, she felt her heart thunder in her chest. If anyone caught her now, she'd never be able to fool them.

But no-one stopped her; she was alone.

A solitary taxi waited beneath a street-light. Tapping on the door, she managed to get it open and carefully, so very carefully, edged her way inside.

"Where to, _Madame?_" the cab-driver had driven too many hospital patients to be overly curious about the woman's condition.

With a racing pulse, she told him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

_Narcisse – Grave for a Blonde – Phone call – First Night – Nine Hospitals – Breaking the News – Heading for Cusset – Tallis Varon, Artist – The Sûreté Investigates – Organising Mycroft – A Permanent Solution._

#

#

Even in the dark, the drive from the hospital didn't take long, although the last part of the ride along an unpaved country lane produced spikes of pain so severe, her breath caught and her vision went blurry.

But then the car was pulling to a slow halt and the taxi-driver was looking between her and the building now illuminated in the headlights.

An old farmhouse formed out of the region's grey volcanic rock, soft and weathered and even in the limited high-beams of the car, it looked a substantial structure.

It also looked completely dark.

"Are you sure you are going to be able to manage everything?" the driver sounded hesitant, unwilling, perhaps, to leave an obviously-injured woman alone in an empty house. "Will you be okay by yourself, Madame?" Clearly her attempts at suppressing groans of pain had not been entirely successful.

"Thank you," she smiled wretchedly, "but I will be fine once I get inside and can rest."

It was only then, of course, that she realised she had no key and no way of locating one. The main door was going to be locked, naturally, so how on earth did she imagine she was going to get inside? _Stupid, stupid_.

"Shall I assist you, Madame?" the driver was already out of his door and walking around to hers as she struggled with the handle. He had it opened and placed a hand beneath her left elbow as she swivelled gingerly in the seat towards him.

"Thank you," she murmured. "As you can see, I have been in an accident and I cannot remember where I left the spare key," she frowned as well as she could, shaking her head a little.

The man smiled. "Around these parts, Madame," he raised his eyebrows and looked knowing. "There is usually only one place for the spare key." Walking over to the main front door he lifted the doormat.

_ No_, she thought._ It was not secure. Nobody left a key under the doormat these days. Surely not._ She wondered why the lack of house-security felt suddenly so wrong.

Lifting the glinting metal up into the air with a cheerful grin, the taxi-driver quickly unlocked the door and, leaning inside, groped around until he located a light switch.

Instantly, the entire front-half of the building shone with warm yellow glow, with strategically-place lighting around the perimeter of the drive and entranceway of the house.

The wave of relief that hit her was so great she nearly cried. "Thank you," her voice was little more than a croak. "I am so thankful to be home at last."

_Home at last?_ Even as she said it, something felt awry, something was ... _missing_ somehow. But at least she was here and the overwhelming sensation of unadulterated relief was as much as she could handle.

Paying the driver all that he asked and adding a ten-Euro tip, she leaned back against the doorframe as the taxi's lights reversed away and eventually vanished into the black of the night.

She had made it. _Narcisse_. Of all the things that should be worrying her right at this moment, there was only one at the forefront of her mind. Where did she keep the tea?

###

Sherlock's explorations, as far as they might, provided a superficial and frowningly unsatisfactory overview of Noel Thibert's current situation. There was a bio-snippet on LinkedIn, some posts on a medical website debating the efficacy of a newly-trialled gerontology treatment; several images, photos of the man in a variety of settings, usually at formal dinners and events. None with family or individual family-members, _odd_. Surely a middle-class man of his age would have some connection to family somewhere? Sherlock's frown deepened.

Navigating to a couple of less-well-known sites of the medical industry, he was able to unearth fragments of the man's medical degree and other relevant studies, a few old publications, finally smiling when he managed to track down a small piece in the classifieds in the local newspaper detailing Thibert's application for a _Permis de Construire_ to extend his home in la Rue Clerget.

The council notice was most comprehensive. It even gave the good doctor's full address and phone number. Extracting his Blackberry, Sherlock dialled the few digits, letting it ring for several seconds before ending the call with a single press of his thumb. Nobody home.

_Good_.

"Ready to go?" he asked, as John finished his tea.

"We're really going to do this?" the blonde man sat up and looked serious. "This isn't London, Sherlock," he said. "If anything goes wrong over here, the French police are not about to be swayed by any fast talking on your part."

Already at the door, the younger Holmes permitted himself a small smile. "Then we shall have to ensure nothing _does_ go wrong," he suggested, opening the door and moving swiftly towards the exit.

John was a second behind him

It was pitch-black by the time they'd found Thibert's house: a fairly imposing two-story dwelling built in the local style, with large square windows and a pitched slate roof, the whole thing a dull golden stone, as were many of the Nevers houses. The place was in darkness. After looking at his watch, Sherlock hunted for an alternative entrance to the property. There was a small alley running down between Thibert's house and its neighbour showing signs of recent construction: odd piles of bricks; an occasional dusting of cement.

"By my calculation, we have an hour before Thibert leaves the hospital for the night," Sherlock kept to the darker shadows and headed around the side of the house. "However, since it's less than two-hundred meters from here to the nearest hospital exit, then we should not linger," he said, scanning the building's lower windows as he eased his long fingers into a pair of leather gloves.

"And what is it we're not going to waste time looking for?" John was also looking for any possible _entrée_.

"Anything that provides a clue to his behaviour," he said. "Family photos, newspaper clippings, documents; some connection between him and Mycroft," he added, pausing as they rounded the corner at the back of the solid stone house. There was a glass-porch and a kitchen door.

It wasn't even locked.

Flexing the handle in his gloved hand, the door opened inwards with a dull click. Pausing a moment to see if Thibert, despite all signs to the contrary, had in fact installed a burglar-alarm. After thirty-seconds of utter silence, Sherlock concluded that the French doctor was as innocent in some ways as he was duplicitous in others.

Flicking on the small torch he always carried, the younger Holmes noted with amused irony that Thibert kept his own torch by the back door in case of a power-outage, no doubt. The house's fuse box would likely be close by.

"Here, John," he said, flicking a beam of light onto the conveniently located device. "Doctor Thibert is nothing if not considerate of our needs. I'll take the upstairs," he added quietly. "Have a good look around down here," he muttered, flicking his torch around the dark and unoccupied rooms. "See if you can find anything of Thibert's past."

Listening to his friend's footsteps moving lightly up the stairs, John walked along a brief passage and slowly cast the beam of his torch around the cluttered and somewhat untidy lounge.

There was too much furniture and too little space – no wonder the guy had applied to build an extension – this place was a pack-rat's paradise.

In the middle of the room, between two sofas that were really far too large for the size of the available space there was a low coffee table, covered in old newspapers, a couple of medical texts and several hefty-looking albums. Lifting up the top cover of the nearest album, John wondered if Thibert's passion was stamps or postcards or something more exotic.

Inside, from page one all the way through every single leaf in the book, was a collection of photographs. No big surprise there, except all the photographs were of the same person. The same woman. Every single one of them.

She was young and blonde and pretty, with long hair and a great smile. In some of the photographs she was laughing and in others she wore a more serious expression. Judging by her clothes, some images had been taken during the heat of summer while the coats and scarves in others suggested a cooler season. This was clearly a person of some note in the doctor's life and yet, looking around, John could see little evidence of a woman's presence in this house.

There was no inherent sense of colour or design; nothing that suggested any form of cohesion in the room or even in the house itself, which was unusual if a woman lived here. Most women seemed to manage these things instinctively; men didn't usually notice there was an issue until a woman started to fix it. There was no-one in this house but Thibert, that was for sure. He lifted the covers of two other albums: more of the blonde.

He continued his search. A large, ornately-framed picture hung in a central spot on the main wall, and it was the same woman. In a long white wedding-gown. Thibert _married_? If so, where was the pretty wife now?

There was nothing much else to see. Shelves stood mostly empty apart from a thick layer of dust. There was no desk that he could locate; nothing to look at that might give an idea of the man's financial or social standing. It was a quiet, neglected little house. A bit sad and dreary, really.

"There's nothing much upstairs. Anything down here?" Sherlock's low tones came from the doorway.

"Only that Thibert has a fixation with _her_," John pointed his torch at the picture hanging on the wall. "He's got hundreds of photos of her in these albums," he said. "_And_ she's wearing a wedding dress in that one," he pointed the torch back to the wall. "But no woman has been living in this house for a long time, if ever," he concluded. "Other than that, not much."

"There's no sign of a woman in Thibert's bedroom, either," Sherlock sniffed in mild frustration. "Hopefully, Anthea will be able to supply some explanation for the doctor's living arrangements and the lack of a putative wife," he compressed his lips. "Still doesn't give me much to go on in the meantime ... _although_," he paused suddenly.

"What?" John raised his eyebrows. He knew that look. "What?"

"The planning permission, John," Sherlock narrowed his eyes in thought. "It was on the planning permission application."

"What was?"

"It was an application to build _un mausolée_ in the garden," the tall man nodded, understanding in his eyes.

"A ... _mausoleum?_" John hesitated. "Thibert wants to build a tomb in his back garden? What on earth for?"

Turning his head to look at the picture of the blonde woman in the wedding dress, Sherlock smiled a little grimly. "Can't you guess?"

"_Oh _…" John looked apprehensive. "He wants to bury his wife in the _garden?_"

"Thibert is clearly obsessed with his dead wife," Sherlock was frowning now. "Which makes it ever more imperative that we discover the connection between him and Mycroft," he said. "Before Cate becomes too big a problem."

###

His Blackberry was in his hand. The speed-dial key beneath his thumb. Taking a deep breath, Mycroft pressed it and waited.

"_Hello_, Neve Adin speaking ..." the happy, lilting voice of Cate's only sister waited for him at the other end of the conversation.

"Hello, Neve," he took another breath. "It's Mycroft ... I'm afraid there's been an accident..."

###

After making sure the front door was closed and locked behind her; she felt a great weariness descend, as if she had been running a hard marathon up the side of a particularly unreasonable alp.

Walking slowly through the softly lit rooms, each with the half-empty feel of the newly acquired home, boxes everywhere, she made her way towards the kitchen and the heart of the house. A typical French farmhouse kitchen, it was a massive square room with solid wooden bench tops and a great big wooden table in the centre. Over to one side was a shining new Aga and a kettle. A pristine white butler's sink stood beneath one of the windows looking out into the dark night.

Wondering how difficult it could possibly be to light the great cast-iron stove, she found the fire-box was already laid with kindling and a box of long matches sat on the bench. Struggling briefly to extract a single match and then strike it without causing her body any more pain, she eventually managed, feeling a warm sense of success as the kindling crackled into life and the main fire caught. There was an enormous steel basket of seasoned firewood to one side so she didn't worry about finding fuel.

Filling the kettle one-handed, she laid it onto the Aga's solid steel hob: it wouldn't be long until it boiled. There was a teapot and a small cardboard box with coffee and tea and mugs and spoons on the table. Fishing out a teapot and a steel canister of tea leaves, she struggled again to undo the screw-top lid with only one hand. About to give up, the lid finally came free. She was so exhausted, she almost cried.

The kettle puffed steam and the tea was made. Pulling out a chair beside the Aga's growing warmth she felt a rustle in her pocket and discovered the packet of painkillers Doctor Thibert must have put there. She took one with the hot tea and knew it wouldn't be long before she'd have to lie down. Taking her mug and walking through the downstairs rooms, she found a large, overstuffed blue-and-white chintz sofa with a pile of crocheted blankets hanging over one arm. Turning on a small table lamp, she returned to the kitchen, switched the lights off and headed back to the couch. Clumsily making a bed with cushions and one of the woollen blankets, she felt her tiredness increase. The medication was kicking in.

Taking one last sip of tea, she flicked the light off and relaxed into the silent darkness. _She was home_. Before the scents and sounds of the farmhouse _Narcisse_ began to weave themselves into her mind, she was asleep.

She dreamed again of deep blue eyes in an unseen face.

###

It was on the train back to Nevers that Claude Moreau asked the obvious question.

"If there was another survivor from the train-wreck," he said thoughtfully. "Where would they have been taken if not the City hospital?"

Staring out into the night as they flew past the dimmed glow of curtained house-windows and imperfect street-lighting, de Chabot folded his arms tighter around his body and frowned faintly at his reflection in the darkened glass. "How many hospitals are there in Nevers?" he asked.

Moreau considered. "Nine, all told," he said. "Including the small specialist ones and the Convent hospital."

"And how many of those with Emergency wards?" Gilles turned to meet the curious eyes of his sergeant.

"Of course there is the main central hospital," he said. "Then the _Polyclinique_, but they usually only deal with specialist need patients, and then there's the Colbert, but that only takes in untreatable and terminal patients."

"The Polyclinique has an emergency ward though, yes?" de Chabot frowned a little more. "Even though they don't normally admit emergency patients. And what about the Red Cross in the Rue Bovet? Don't they deal with emergencies sometimes?"

"You think the Varon woman made it out of the train and ended up in one of the smaller hospitals?" Moreau pursed his lips. "Then why wouldn't we have heard anything before now?" he asked. "Why would a survivor of the wreck be so entirely forgotten?"

"It would be strange, but not impossible," de Chabot mused. "It was chaos that day, remember? Bodies everywhere, fire and smoke and explosions; people charging around in ambulances, rescue teams all over the place ... who could say what might have happened to a single victim in all of that mess?"

"But someone would have said something about it, _surely_?" Moreau looked increasingly bothered. "There must have been _some_ record of where everyone went?"

"Kept by whom?" Gilles de Chabot uncoiled his lean frame from the corner seat and uncricked his neck. "Who knows what may have happened? Who can be positive that such a thing did _not_ happen?"

"So you want me to arrange a search of all the hospitals in Nevers in case the Varon woman is, or has been, in one of them?"

"If you would," de Chabot smiled lightly. He watched Moreau nod before he lay back and closed his eyes. "Now would be a good time to begin," he added, softly.

Claude Moreau squinted fractionally, assessing de Chabot's expression. He sighed and pulled out his phone.

Closing his own eyes as the sound of his sergeant muttering instructions down the phone lulled him into a sense of ease; Gilles wondered what they would find. If Mademoiselle Tallis Varon were indeed alive, where was she and in whose care? If alive, had her disappearance from the scene been a genuine oversight or an act of deliberation? Why had nobody heard of a missing survivor before now? There were always rumours and Nevers was a small town.

Folding his arms tight across his chest, de Chabot made himself comfortable in the corner seat as Moreau's gravelling drone sent him into a light doze.

###

He had been wearing the same clothes for two days; his mouth tasted foul, his skin slick and uncomfortable and his shave unsatisfactory. If only to retain some credible pretence of propriety, he needed to go home; sleep, rest, refresh. It was a logical, sensible step.

Mycroft felt ill at the very idea.

The thought that he might have to face his children, that they would finally be the ones to witness his utter fall from all things rational, that they would ask him the impossible questions, questions he had not even dared ask himself.

They would see him for the shell that he was; would peel away his flimsy veneer of normality and witness the pitiful remains of his razed heart.

But he could not continue as he was. He summoned the Jaguar and finally left Whitehall. The lights at the front of the townhouse glowed into the night as his key slid home, the door opening silently beneath his hand.

Mycroft felt his heart pound to breathlessness and his stomach clench to the point of nausea as he stepped into the warmth.

Bustling out to see who had come in through the door, Nora Compton's instant smile covered her face as she saw Mycroft standing there, back from France already. Immediately, she looked around him to see if Cate was following behind, only ceasing her movements suddenly when she saw the haunted expression on his face.

Taking in the pallor of his skin, his curiously unkempt appearance and the terrible tension of his body, Nora knew instinctively that something shocking had happened.

"What is it?" it was all she could manage. He hadn't said anything yet; perhaps he was waiting for Miss Cate to come in before they said anything; maybe they had been robbed in Paris or perhaps there had been something bad happen on the flight back or maybe even ...

"_What is it?_" she demanded, her voice a harsh croak. _Where was Cate?_

"Nora, you need to sit down, I think," Mycroft walked towards the older woman, his fingers outstretched.

Her hand jerked away from his, moving to cover her mouth as her face crumpled in understanding. She was not ready to cry yet, Mycroft noted in an oddly detached part of his mind, but it would be soon. As soon as the realisation sank in that Cate would not be coming through the door with him tonight or any other night.

"Nora, sit down," he allowed his fingers to coil around her elbow and guide her into the front lounge and to the nearest couch. _God_ it had only been a few days ago that he had brought Cate in here after her black-belt trial, that he had ... Mycroft felt his chest tighten beyond bearing. _Not yet, not yet. Not now._

Lowering himself to sit beside his housekeeper, Mycroft realised he had to be the calm one here, that no matter how much he wanted to find some private dark place for himself, there were others who would need him more.

"Nora, there's been an accident ..."

###

They had made it back to the hotel without any problem at all – not even the hint that Thibert might have caught them in his house which, John considered, was something of a novelty. Worn out by the endless day, he had crawled into his bed and crashed for the night.

It was quite daylight when he opened his eyes next, the odd lavendery scent of the room's furniture polish confusing his senses. Blinking several times, John was already thinking about a cup of tea as he sat up and rubbed his face. Turning his head, he saw Sherlock's bed was unwrinkled; clearly only one of them caught any sleep last night. The soft tap-tapping made him turn his head a little more as he saw his flatmate sitting in a corner of one of the window-seats still interrogating the internet.

"Anything new since last night?" John yawned and rolled out of bed.

"Nothing. Still waiting on Mycroft's assistant for data on Thibert. She's being annoyingly sluggish about it."

"Anthea may have one or two other things on her plate, you know," John filled the kettle. "Especially if Mycroft's not … fully active."

Pausing his typing, Sherlock lifted his head and stared blankly at the floor. _Yes; that would be problematic_.

"In that case, we cannot wait for the information and need to follow all other possible leads," Sherlock nodded at the screen in front of him. "The train leaves in an hour, so get a move on."

"Leave?" John turned, a carton of cold milk in his hand. "Going where?"

Turning the laptop to face me, Sherlock tapped the map laid across the screen. "_Cusset_," he said. "We're going to Cusset."

###

Golden light streamed in the un-curtained windows as she blinked awake. For a second, she had no idea where she was, except to note immediately that it wasn't a hospital. Attempting some little movements to gauge the level of this morning's disability, she was relieved to note that nothing seemed any worse than the night before.

Pushing herself gradually upright from the sofa, she felt her ribs protest and her shoulder grate stiffly. Her right arm throbbed as she tried to move it, but it was more of a dull ache than a spike of pain. Looking around, the details of last night came back to her; she was at _Narcisse_, outside Saint-Yorre. She had left Cusset hospital last night before the doctor there could return her to Nevers.

So far, so good.

Now she was actually here, she had to find out what there was about the place that had drawn her here. That nobody else had disturbed her sleep argued that she lived here alone which, in some ways was a relief. At least nobody would be worried about her disappearing.

Wriggling herself slowly towards the edge of the surprisingly comfortable sofa, she stood and walked back into the kitchen: it was a toasty haven, another surprise, until she remembered she had lit the Aga last night. Checking the temperature-gauge, she saw the needle was in the black-zone, demanding that the beast be fed soon lest it needed to be relit. Carefully levering the feeder door open, she bent gingerly to pluck a small log for the Aga's maw. A few additional logs and the needle moved swiftly towards the middle of the gauge where it should be. Hopefully, that would keep everything going for a couple of hours or so.

Putting the kettle on to boil, she started looking around for a bathroom. Thankfully, there was a small washroom and toilet downstairs, but obviously the main facilities would be upstairs.

She looked askance at the straight wooden stairs running up to the higher floor from just outside the kitchen. They looked steep and she was barely managing to get around on flat ground, but sooner or later, she would need to look upstairs. _May as well give it a try now_. Hanging onto the rail and taking each step one-at-a-time, it took her nearly a minute to make it to the top.

But she did make it.

There were several rooms up here, all as yet unfurnished, although the main bedroom, when she found it, looked quite liveable. A fully-made bed, rugs, a _bureau_, a couple of tallboys and a large walk-in wardrobe filled, she was pleased to see, with all sorts of clothing. Having lived in the baggy white hospital gown for nearly three days, the prospect of getting clean and properly dressed was an unconsidered pleasure.

There was an _ensuite_ bathroom, all entirely new and modern, with a couple of new towels waiting to be used. Clearly she really had just moved in, or was in the process of moving when she was involved in the accident. So why was she on a train from Paris? Did she work there? Had she been there on business? To meet someone? Was she expecting any more furniture and stuff or did she live here now?

It was all very confusing.

Making her way back down the stairs was a lot easier and she headed to the kettle to brew her morning tea. There was also milk in the modern refrigerator which, after sniffing carefully, she discovered to be still fresh and drinkable. Clearly then, someone, perhaps herself, had been here only recently.

Exploring the old stone-flagged pantry, she found there were some basic stores, but nothing fresh. No bread, although there was a box of oat flakes and another of crackers. There was a decent selection of fruit preserves. If needs be, she could always survive on porridge and crisp bread until she worked out how to arrange for supplies … and how to pay for them.

That was the next thing, she realised. _She had to find out who she was_. She needed something with her name and address, some documented detail to tie her to this place and this life.

But first a shower and clean clothes. She headed back up the stairs, easier this time, and into the wardrobe, looking for something loose and simple to put on. Folded on one of the shelves were several pairs of fleecy grey track-pants next to a pile of loose cotton t-shirts. One of the tall-boys contained underwear. Heading into the ensuite, she was pleased to note it was a very contemporary wet-room, the entire place being tiled and waterproof – no problems for her having to manoeuver in small, enclosed spaces.

Stripping off, she turned on the hot tap and prayed for hot water to be available. It was, gushing out from a wide square showerhead in the ceiling. Standing beneath it and letting the hot water wash away the grime from her hair and skin, she began to feel a semblance of humanity creep back into her bones although her head was still very tender when she had banged it. The scent of the shampoo brought no memories, but she was so pleased to be clean that she didn't really care. It was at this point that she saw the value of having the lightweight plastic-cast on her arm instead of a solid plaster one.

Checking her face in the mirror, she saw that the swelling of her mouth had virtually disappeared and some of the lighter bruising on her face was beginning to turn a delightful shade of greenish-yellow.

Back downstairs, feeling better than she could remember feeling since she woke up in Nevers, she found the stiffness in her joints and muscles was abating as she moved around and that, combined with the feeling of cleanliness and the hot tea made the day seem even brighter. She felt almost good.

Walking around the ground floor in the daylight, she noticed rooms that she had bypassed the previous night. One was clearly an office, with a large escritoire and heavy wooden bookshelves, and through the next door, as she opened it, was … _oh_.

A massive artist's studio, with enormous panels of glass into the ceiling and walls, flooding the entire place with golden sunshine and warmth. The interior walls were a dusty whitewash, with a roughness beneath that spoke of the farmhouse's original purpose. The floor was a series of ancient wooden boards, each smoothed flat by wear and the patina of historical usage. There was a great long bench-like table running down the centre of the room, with two drafting tables at one end, each tilted almost vertical and each holding a large artwork of some description. Numerous canvasses of different sizes and degrees of completion were stacked in batches against the walls or on easels and there was an old oak dresser piled high with paints and glass containers of oily liquids and jars and jars of pencils and paintbrushes.

Over against the far wall, there was a long wooden bench stacked with even more canvasses, though they looked more complete than the ones resting on the floor. Odd wooden frames hung at angles on wooden dowels in the wall. The whole room smelled of white spirit and linseed oil and varnish.

Apparently she was a painter.

Standing before one of the sketches on a drafting table, she examined the work in progress. A representation of a rural scene rendered in watercolours and ink, though incomplete, it was a lovely piece of work and she wondered who had done it. With a start, she realised it was probably her.

Strangely reluctant to touch anything, she backtracked into the office and sat herself slowly into the swivel chair.

Turning her attention to a pile of opened letters. There were bills, legal documents and a number of letters from a bank and utility suppliers. The first thing she checked was name and the address. Each one had been sent to a _Tallis Varon_, at Narcisse farm, Rue de la Rivière, Saint-Yorre. The name was vaguely familiar and a shiver of relief went down her back at the feeling.

_River Road, Sainte-Yorre_.

She tried to make some connection between herself and the location, but gave up after several minutes when nothing had clicked, possibly because she hadn't lived here very long, if at all.

There were three small framed photographs on the top of the old desk. In one, an elderly lady was in a garden filled with summer flowers; she was smiling as she waved a long-stemmed lily at the camera. There was a small card at the bottom of the frame: _Nana_. The second photograph was of a young man and a woman embracing each other, dressed in the late sixties fashion of flowery shirts and bell-bottomed jeans: _Maman et Papa_.

The third photograph was of two young women, both dark-haired and laughing, their arms about one another, glasses of red wine in their free hands. _Cate et Tallis_.

Her heart thumped abruptly. One of the women in the picture was her, a younger her, to be sure, but still, no question of identity now. _Finally_, she had an idea of who she was.

Tallis Varon_, Artist._

###

Sergeant Moreau's instructions of the previous evening had sent a number of uniformed police and detective teams speeding out into the Never's medical community as early as decently possible in an attempt to ensure there were no unreported casualties from the train-wreck. They even went to the maternity hospital to be absolutely positive that no single place of medical service had been overlooked. Thus far, nothing had been unearthed: no additional information was forthcoming.

Detectives Huot and Labar had been given the task of verifying no injured persons from the train had been treated at Hospital Colbert and naturally, the person deemed best to answer their queries was one Doctor Noel Thibert.

The adolescent features of Daniel Huot, clearly a teenager who could only have joined the Sûreté straight from school a year or two before, smiled as he awaited Thibert's response to his question.

"Casualties from the TGV wreck here?" he asked, raising his eyebrows. "_Gentlemen_," he paused, smiling in a slightly condescending manner. "This is a facility for the elderly and terminally sick," Thibert lifted his hands apart. "We do not take in emergency cases of any description."

"Not even in the case of such a terrible disaster as there was three days ago?" Huot was innocence incarnate. "Surely, if there was a crisis, this hospital would have been able to accommodate injured persons?"

"We may have some facilities that _could_ be used," Thibert smiled stiffly, as though he was rapidly wearying of this conversation. "But nobody was sent to us," he added. "Please, feel free to have a good look around the place if you don't believe me," he said, his gesture embracing the entire building. "You will find no-one here from the accident."

Holding the doctor's gaze for several moments, Huot finally nodded, turning to leave with a faint smile on his lips. He stopped turning back as if remembering something of note.

"It's just that Jac Rochon swears he helped bring someone over here because the main hospital emergency bay was overflowing," Huot looked at his associate for support.

Labar nodded helpfully. "True, he did," the second detective confirmed, smiling easily. "Although it was a crazy morning; it's entirely possible that Rochon was mistaken."

Shaking his head, Thibert made a face. "Monsieur Rochon may have _thought_ he brought someone here," the doctor said, looking entirely doubtful. "But as you say, he must have been mistaken; no emergency case was brought to us on a stretcher that day."

Huot nodded, as if finally satisfied. "Many thanks for your time, Doctor Thibert," he smiled brightly. "Sorry to have taken you from your patients."

"No matter," Thibert shrugged, sounding thoughtful. "You are just doing your jobs."

It was only as Huot and Labar were walking back to their unmarked Opel that the innocence on Huot's features devolved into something altogether less angelic.

"We never mentioned a stretcher, did we?"

###

"I can't tell them yet," Mycroft sat in the kitchen with Nora. The old woman's tears had dried for the moment and they were both staring down into cups of cooling tea. "Until I have all the information I need to tell them whatever they might ask me and until I have Cate ... until Cate's ... until I have her _here_ so that we may do this properly and with the right level of ..." his voice trailing, Mycroft fell silent.

Nora laid her bony hand on top of his fingers. "It's all right, my boy," she offered consolingly. "The children don't need to be told anything until you're ready for them to be told," she said. "We can manage this between us, don't you worry about it."

Leaning back in the chair and drawing in a deep and weary breath. "I'm so tired," he said, rubbing his eyes. "And yet the thought of sleep is abhorrent."

"Shock will do that to a body," Nora nodded sagely. "Mixes stuff up in your head until everything's upside down," she sighed. "Go and have a shower and then lie down for a little while. Even if you don't sleep you might be surprised how much better a little rest can make you feel."

"Are you in any way related to my Assistant?" Mycroft found a faint smile was on his lips as the other women in his life set about organising him.

"Don't need to be; 'tis common sense," Nora heaved a great sigh and shook her head. "Those poor babes, not yet four and losing their mother. It will go hard with them."

Mycroft had no words. His hand squeezed hers.

Sad silence hung between them.

###

Noel Thibert sat at the desk in his private office in Colbert Hospital and bit his thumb. The visit from the Sûreté had been unexpected, although it was obvious, in hindsight, that at some point_ someone_ would have remembered bringing the woman here. And now he had committed himself to a particular course of action, he needed to be absolutely sure that nothing could happen that might cause him further trouble.

The woman was a potential problem. Even if she didn't remember who she was, she'd remember him, his name. He had told the police that nobody from the train wreck had come to Colbert, and he had managed to destroy all the physical evidence and records, but the woman could prove he had lied.

If it was discovered he had lied, had been guilty of malpractice in the woman's case, he'd not only lose his job, he'd be struck off the medical register. He'd never be able to practice medicine again. Thibert closed his eyes and groaned. _The past repeated itself._

There was only one thing for it; the woman would have to be silenced. _Permanently_.

Finding his mobile, he rang the ambulance driver's number again.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

_The Longest Night – The Outside World –Dance of the Sûreté – A Lethal Arrangement – For Mycroft's Sake – Modern Technology – A Great Place for Ducks – The Last of Mme. Sollan – A Sort of Game – Proof._

#

#

Fortunately, the twins were asleep and not expecting either of their parents back until the following day at the earliest. It meant there were a few more precious hours before he might be expected to see them, to talk to them, to watch their world crash down when he told them ... he walked slowly into the master bedroom ... the room that she had made hers not so very long ago. And now it would be empty of her once again. He looked around at Cate's things; a silk scarf trailed over the back of a chair; perfume on the dressing-table. A pair of earrings. The book she had been reading.

Mycroft closed his eyes tight as he felt emotions rise; as if his fierce desire to be strong for his children might actually be enough to accomplish the task. Angrily, he tore off his suit, caring little that he might damage the fine fabric: he would never wear it again.

Heading into the ensuite bathroom, he turned the shower up high; high and hot, almost to the point of burning as he eased under the stinging spray, turning his face to the hard, unfeeling tiles as he finally allowed the corroding grief to erupt unheard beneath the shower's stream.

It would be the longest night.

###

Strangely, the revelation of her identity left her feeling achingly alone.

Was this who she was? Was this her life? It felt … incomplete, as if a central and by far the greater portion of it was still oddly missing. An inexplicable wave of disappointment washed over her. She sighed. Maybe she'd feel better as her memory improved.

Deciding to be practical, she looked around. It was clear she would need to get in some real provisions in the very near future, for which she would need money. Where would she keep her bag? Keys? Purse? Then she realised: it would have been on the train with her; her purse, credit-cards if she had any, driving licence – _did she even drive?_ – everything would have been lost in the train's destruction. So she would need to find her banking detail and her financial status. Clearly she was making some kind of money if she was able to afford this place, and if she were a successful artist, then she probably had a bank account somewhere, maybe even an accountant.

Clutching a mug of hot tea, she returned to the office and the pile of opened mail that lay haphazardly scattered across the escritoire's surface. There were all sorts of envelopes – big and small – stuffed into the desks pigeonholes, so there was bound to be _something_ here that gave an idea of her financial standing.

There was.

A white folder in one of the slots displayed a series of recent bank-statements in a local Vichy bank. According to the total at the bottom of the most recent page, she was the possessor of a very respectable balance. Tucked inside the front cover of the folder was a letter form a firm of Paris accountants. There was a signature and a printed name at the bottom. On the spur of the moment, picking up the small plastic phone on the desk, rang the direct line listed beneath the name.

"_Bonjour_, Christine Allane speaking."

"Good morning, Ms Allane," she paused, wondering what on earth to say. "I believe my name is Tallis Varon, but I was in an accident recently and ..." she got no further, her words drowned out by the shriek of amazement from the other end of the line.

"Tallis? _Tallis?_ Is that really you?" the woman's voice was elevated and sounded almost out of control. "_We all thought you were dead!_ Where have you been? Where are you now? _Speak to me!_ Tell me everything! Tallis! _Tallis_."

She hadn't expected this kind of a welcome. "If you slow down, I'll tell you," she said, smiling into the phone. Launching into a brief account of the train crash, or as much as she had been able to gather of it; her awakening in hospital in Nevers and her journey to _Narcisse_. After a pause, she added that the accident had affected her memory and, barring a couple of minor things, she couldn't remember anything from before the accident.

"So how did you get to _Narcisse_?" Allane demanded. "And why is your voice different?"

"Of all things," she said, I remembered the name of this place and that it was outside Vichy. I'm getting flashes of detail that seem to make sense, but nothing cohesive yet," she said. "And I've got a broken nose and am a bit banged up, which may explain why I sound strange."

"Are you badly hurt?" Christine suddenly wanted to be sure. "Should you be in hospital?"

"I've just managed to get _out_ of hospital," had it not been for the pain, she would have laughed. "No way I'm going back there."

"Typical Tallis," the Allane woman was finally calming down. "What do you need?" she asked. "Do you need me to organise anything for you? Are you going to be able to make the exhibit in Paris next week?"

"Exhibit?"

"The big gig showcasing your recent works," she added. "At the Marian Goodman Gallery on rue du Temple? You don't remember?"

"I don't remember much of anything," she said awkwardly. "I'm just beginning to start functioning by myself, and I'm not a very pretty sight right now, so I don't think I'll be doing much publicity work for a while."

"Well, speaking as your business-manager, perhaps we should talk about that after you've had a chance to rest and gather your thoughts," Christine said. "In the meantime, can I arrange anything for you? A private nurse to come and help you? A doctor? Medications? Anything?"

"I lost everything in the crash and don't have any idea of what was lost or what I usually carried around with me," she said. "I don't have any cash or credit cards, nor do I seem to have any food in the house. Could you arrange a delivery of some basic groceries to _Narcisse_ for me, and perhaps a small amount of cash in case I need to pay for taxies or anything? There seems to be plenty of cash in my _Credit Lyonnais_, so I won't starve."

"The _Credit Lyonnais_ is your local account in Vichy," the accountant said. "You are aware you have other accounts in Paris, yes?"

"I have no idea about anything," she sighed. "And right now, I don't need to know, I just want to rest and get my head back together. Can you help get me the things I need?"

"Of course, I can do all that you ask immediately," Christine Allane was efficiency itself. "But are you sure you don't need medical attention or medications? Do you want me to come down there? Do you want me to contact anyone for you?"

"You don't need to come all the way down here," she smiled. "You can if you really want to, but I'm not dying; I just look terrible and I don't want to scare anyone. If you could send some painkillers, that might be helpful," she agreed. "And if you could send me a list of the people I should get in touch with for anything either in Paris or around Vichy, I'd be eternally grateful. It might also help me to get some of my memories back."

"Of course," Allane was all business. "I can do all of that today. Do you have your laptop with you?"

"I lost everything on the train, Christine," she said. "Everything I had with me."

"Right, I'll organise a replacement for you," the accountant said, as if she were already making a list for the insurance claim. _Perhaps she was_.

After ending the phone conversation, she felt better in some undefinable way; just making contact again with the outside world was probably a help. At least she knew she had friends and wasn't totally alone.

Making her way into the studio, she poked around in some of the paints. An odd desire to actually lift a brush and create something arose inside her. Could she still paint? If art was her livelihood, did she remember how to do it? It was a frightening notion.

Taking a breath, she pulled down some tubes of acrylic and a small painting board, already prepared with a stretched piece of art-paper. Idly selecting paints and mixing them on a plastic plate, she found she was constructing a pair of eyes; darkly blue, the colour and the shape took form beneath her fingers. It took only a matter of moments, but her heart pounded as she stared down into the piercing blue scrutiny of a man's eyes, the dark lashes and elegant brows framing a gaze that looked right through her.

Her hand faltered and she rested the brush before her shaking fingers spoiled the result. Who was this man? She knew him, she knew him well, but _who was he?_

###

"And you're quite certain he knew more that he was admitting?" Claude Moreau tapped his fingertips slowly on the edge of his desk as he listened to Daniel Huot's recounting of the interview with Noel Thibert.

"Firstly, the doctor's responses were all a little too much on the practised side," the younger man pursed his lips. "Everything he said sounded as if he'd thought the response through before, rehearsed it, almost."

"What about the stretcher comment?" Moreau examined a fingernail in thought.

"Yeah, that was funny," Huot sat on the corner of the sergeant's desk. Moreau raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

"When we were checking around the rescue teams, it was Jac Rochon who said he and Albert Damery and a couple of others were the last ones to take a look in the first carriage before the fire took it completely," he said. "They wanted to be absolutely sure they weren't leaving any poor bastard to burn to death, and that's when they found the woman near the front," he paused, looking down at Moreau's expression. "Rochon says he has no idea how she could have survived, but she was still breathing although clearly in a bad way. They managed to get her onto a makeshift stretcher but by the time they'd got out, all of the ambulances had either been pulled back, away from the explosions, or had gone completely."

"So how did they get the woman to the Colbert?" Moreau leaned back in his chair and narrowed his eyes at the youthful detective.

"To bring her into town, they used Damery's truck. Fortunately she was unconscious the whole time – you know how bad that truck of his is."

Claude knew the truck. It was a miracle that it was still able to run at all, let alone with a full load. It was a great big lumbering monster. Probably pre-war, knowing Damery's dislike of spending money.

"Anyway, the entire centre of town was pretty much gridlocked; you remember we couldn't even get some of our own cars out on the street for a while? There was no way that truck could get anywhere close to the City hospital, but they _were_ within carrying-distance of the Colbert, and _that_," Huot paused for emphasis, "is where they took her."

"The Colbert?" Moreau raised his eyebrows.

"The _Colbert_," Huot's youthful face was animated with success.

###

"_Yes?_ You want me to take _another_ patient to the wrong hospital?" the man was less than thrilled to hear from Thibert so soon and couldn't decide whether to be pissed off that the doctor rang him whenever he pleased, or gratified that he was considered so indispensable. Either way, it meant a considerable amount of money.

"The woman I asked you to lose in Lyon, who I _paid_ you to lose in Lyon, is now at Cusset, one of the _last_ places I wanted her to be," Thibert's voice was low and angry. "And for this reason, because of your _complete_ _ineptitude_, I find myself in a position where simply losing her is no longer sufficient," the doctor paused in ill-omened silence.

The driver waited as the meaning sank in. _This was a new level of business_; Thibert had asked for his assistance in the past, but those had been passive events: taking recalcitrant patients to the wrong hospital, he'd done that before; losing paperwork, the occasional delay of some old biddy who might therefore meet her maker sooner rather than later, but this ... _this_ was a different ball-game. This sounded a bit more _interesting_.

"I explained what happened; there was no way I could get the woman back into the van without the right paperwork and as we both know," the driver paused meaningfully himself. "That was something I didn't have."

"Then return the money I paid you," Thibert sounded unimpressed. "Either repay it or finish the job."

"And what is it you would have me do this time?" the driver wasn't about to repay anything; couldn't, anyway. A long-shot at Bellerive racetrack had proved to be exactly that.

"Finish the job; get the woman out of the way."

Oh yes: definitely _interesting_.

"You want me to go into Cusset hospital without anyone asking me what I'm doing; find the woman who could be anywhere, somehow get her out of the building without her kicking up as fuss and then drive her all the way to Lyon?" the driver sounded weary. "Are you quite mad_?_"

"You won't have to take her anywhere," Thibert was more relaxed; he was on surer ground now. "I'll leave a small package for you in the driver's lounge at Nevers. Collect it later, drive to Cusset, find the woman and deal with the problem, and nothing more will need to be said."

"What's in the package?"

"Only a couple of pills that will make her forget she ever met me," the doctor sounded confident. "All you have to do is slip her the medication and she'll go to sleep for a while, that's all."

"Is it poison?" the driver was mildly curious. _Losing_ someone was one thing; actively doing away with a person was something else entirely.

"No, _of course not_," Thibert was quite clear. "Just something that'll give her a good long sleep and when she wakes up, she won't remember anything about Nevers."

"And that's all you want me to do; just give her the pills?"

"Just the pills," the doctor's voice was soothing.

The driver considered. He wasn't too bothered what the substance was, poison or otherwise, and Cusset hospital was a quiet place: hardly anyone there at certain times of the day – it would be child's play to get in an out without anyone seeing. And if all he was doing was sending the woman to sleep, well, that wasn't anything so terrible. He didn't want to give up such a lucrative source of spare income, either. _Untaxed_ spare income. He could do this little job with his eyes closed. He'd done worse in the past. A lot worse.

"Okay, I'll do it," he said. "I'll come collect the package later today."

"Make sure you do," Thibert said, hanging up the phone, his feeling of anxiety somewhat lessened. He almost chuckled. _Was it poison?_ Only a fool would ask such a question. Anything sufficiently powerful to send a person to sleep for a long time was going to be toxic.

_Of course it was poison_. The woman would soon be a problem to nobody.

###

The journey between Nevers and Cusset took precisely one hour and sixteen minutes and was bang on schedule.

"That was the same kind of train as the one that crashed, by the way," Sherlock was pleased to inform John as they debarked at the main station in Vichy.

"Thank you for not saying anything when we got on," John looked back at the train over his shoulder. "Although it was a really comfortable ride."

"Statistics argue you are more likely to die by shark-attack than death-by- rail," he said, a pleased expression on his face. "Let's hope there are few sharks in Cusset."

Looking around him in the mid-morning sunshine, John fished in his pocket for a tourist map he'd picked up at Nevers. Peering at it, he looked around to get his bearings.

"Looks like Cusset Hospital is down this road," he jabbed his thumb around to the west. "Down the Rue Jean Jaurès; that way."

"We should hurry; the trail may run cold at any moment," Sherlock was already striding off down the centre of the bitumened road.

"This place reminds me of Bournemouth," John observed as he kept pace with the taller man. "Very clean and quiet."

"Hopefully, the hospital will be the same," Sherlock narrowed his eyes as he stared ahead, the dark, burnt-orange walls of the hospital coming into view.

Pausing on the pavement opposite, they both assessed the front entrance of the small medical facility. Though modern, it had been built in something of a neo-gothic revival, with tall, arched windows and large glass-panelled doors enclosed within a deeply receding understory.

"No chance ambulances could stop here," Sherlock noted. "There must be a vehicle entrance in another part of the building."

"How are we going to find out if an accident-patient came here yesterday from Nevers?" John was familiar with this sort of place: everyone was going to be very protective of their bit of territory and incredibly resistant to outsiders. They'd have to play things cleverly. "We can't just barge in expecting people to answer our questions."

"No doubt I shall think of something," Sherlock strolled towards the main door which swished open at his approach.

"Yeah," John sighed quietly. "That's what worries me."

"_Bonjour Madame_," Sherlock's smile was entirely politic as he greeted the solid, middle-aged woman at the main reception. "We have just travelled here from Nevers; apparently a relative of mine was brought here by mistake yesterday and I am trying to locate her."

"And what is the name of this relative?" the woman regarded the both of them with faint suspicion.

"The lady's name is Holmes; _Cate Holmes_. It's possible she may have received some injury to her head."

"An accident victim?" the woman shook her head. "We don't take those sorts of patients here, only those requiring palliative and end-of-life care."

"That is why she may have been sent here by mistake, Madame," Sherlock maintained an air of civil politeness, although his foot began tapping. "It is hardly a difficult question to answer."

The _receptioniste_ leaned back, a faint scowl arriving between her eyes.

"Cate Holmes is also British," John added. "Surely someone at the centre of everything that happens in this place such as yourself would know if there was a British patient here?" he smiled, trying for the fresh-faced charm that several women had told him was appealing.

Sherlock coughed but remained otherwise silent.

Looking at the smiling blonde man, the woman that what a pleasant, charming expression he had, almost boyish, in fact. She let her scowl fade.

"In that case, Monsieur," she addressed her comments only to John, having deemed his taller companion already beyond the pale. "I'm afraid that you are definitely going to be disappointed – we do not have anyone in here who is British, and you are right; I would certainly know of it if we had."

"Then may we speak to whoever admitted the _male_ patient who came here from Nevers yesterday evening, please? I know it was a man because I saw him being loaded onto the ambulance," Sherlock was rapidly running out of patience with this singularly unhelpful individual. "A doctor? A nurse, perhaps? Someone with a modicum of intelligence?"

The receptionist took a deep breath through her nose, her lips thinning.

"It would be enormously helpful for us if we could, possibly, speak with whoever admitted the man yesterday," John bravely attempted to quell the rising storm. "Even if all we can do is discover we were incorrect, in which case we will very quickly leave you in peace."

Staring between the two men, the woman realised she would probably not be rid of them until they got the information they wanted. She sighed. Nobody had any understanding of how difficult her job really was. Lifting an old-fashioned telephone, she rang through to the back desk, asking for the name of whoever was on admittance last evening. There followed a rapid but fairly brief conversation in idiomatic French.

"You are in luck, Monsieur," the receptionist replaced the phone and again spoke only to John. "The Sister who was working admittance last night is just about to finish a double-shift and will come down here to speak with you before she leaves," she said. "You may sit over there," she nodded at some old red plastic chairs several yards away.

Fortunately, they didn't have to wait long; within five minutes of the conversation a youngish woman pushed through a set of double doors and looked around for them, smiling as she did.

"You are the men who are looking for your relative?" she asked. "But you say your relative is British, yes? We have no British patients here, nor did any come in yesterday."

"Was there a woman in the ambulance last night from Nevers?" Sherlock schooled himself not to snap.

"Yes there was," the nurse nodded. "But she could not have been British; we do not take foreign nationals in this hospital."

"Had the woman that came in last night been hurt and bruised?" John felt his chest tighten as he held his breath, waiting for the answer. "Did she look like she'd been in an accident?"

The nurse considered. "Well, yes, actually, she did," she said, shrugging lightly. "Her face was severely bruised and swollen and her right arm was cast, which is unusual for our patients who are mostly too ill to get themselves hurt, though it's not impossible."

"Can you describe her for us?" oddly, Sherlock found his thoughts turn towards his brother's undeclared anguish. _Let it be Cate_ ... _for Mycroft's sake_.

"I didn't see her all that well; it was dark and I was having an argument about paperwork with the driver of the ambulance. All I could clearly see was that her face was bruised and her arm was in a cast. Sorry," she shrugged again. "But that's the best I can do."

"What colour hair did she have?" Sherlock demanded. "Was it long and blonde?"

"No, Monsieur," the nurse shook her head sadly. "I'm afraid this lady had dark hair of a mid-length. If your relative is blonde, this was not her."

Sherlock felt his heart speed. _It could be Cate_. She might be in this very building right now. He felt his throat dry. _For Mycroft's sake_.

"Is she here now? Who would have seen her on the ward?" John stepped forward, his face earnest. "Is there a Ward Sister or a doctor we might speak with?" he asked. "I'm a doctor myself and I understand how busy everyone is, but this is genuinely a critical matter."

"_Un_ _Docteur?_" the nurse smiled. "You should have said that straightaway – I will see who was looking after her last night. Wait, please," the nurse returned to the reception desk and lifted one of the desk phones.

In under a minute, another woman appeared, wearing a coat and looking as if she had just arrived. She had.

"My shift begins in fifteen minutes, I don't want to be late," she said, checking her watch.

"Were you here last night?" Sherlock's voice held a certain intensity. "It's _important_. Were you here and did you attend a dark-haired female patient with a bruised face?"

Frowning slightly at the unexpected tension in the tall man's approach, the newcomer nodded. "Yes," she said. "A patient down from Nevers last night: youngish, dark brown hair, bruised face, broken nose, injured arm and shoulder, quite a mess, actually, although that wasn't the really serious problem."

"There was a more serious problem than her injuries?" John's voice was low and quiet. "What was that?"

"Well, technically, you should speak with Doctor Salman who was treating her last night before she left, but it appears the lady was also suffering from an acute retrograde amnesia; she didn't know who or where she was but knew that she wanted to come to Vichy for some reason."

"Acute retrograde amnesia?" a chill ran down John's back. "She's completely lost her memory?"

"_Wait_," Sherlock's abruptly raised hand cut through the conversation. "_Before she left?_"

###

"Earthquake," Gilles de Chabot walked out of his glass-walled office and sat in the chair next to his sergeant. "That's what caused the crash. The Central Bureau of Seismology have been in touch with the track engineers who have just discovered several micro-fissures near the line south of La Charité-sur-Loire," he paused thoughtfully. "Probably nobody on board would have noticed anything, perhaps not even the driver, but the tremor was just enough to lift one of the tracks a few centimetres and at that speed ..." de Chabot made a face.

"So, a genuine accident?" Claude Moreau shrugged. "Well, that's one problem we don't have to worry about any more," he said with a certain relief. "I admit I wasn't looking forward to investigating a deliberate piece of sabotage."

"No, not sabotage, thank God," de Chabot raked his hair back from his face. "Anything further on the missing woman?"

"For some as yet unknown reason, it seems that our good doctor Thibert is lying," Moreau turned to a manila folder on his desk, flipping it open and examining the contents. "We have three signed statements from local men who all say they assisted in transporting an injured woman from the train wreck just before the first carriage went up in flames. Further, that they took her to the Colbert since the road was too jammed with traffic for them to take her to the City hospital."

"And what does Thibert say about all this?" Gilles frowned. What reason would a doctor have to lie about such an event?

"He swears he never attended the woman, that no such person was ever formally admitted and that there is no record of her ever existing," Moreau looked sour.

"Do we have any proof, other than the men's statements, that she was admitted as a patient?" de Chabot raised his eyebrows. "I would prefer some corroboration rather than simply a 'he said' and 'he said' argument."

"I have Huot and Labar chasing up any documentation that might have been missed," Moreau looked sour. "But it seems the Colbert has rats," he muttered.

"_Rats?_" Gilles looked profoundly horrified. "In a _hospital_?"

"There has been at least one busy little rat in the hospital, eating up evidence of the woman's presence," if it were possible, Moreau looked ever sourer.

"You think Thibert has been destroying evidence?" de Chabot asked. "That surely cannot be a simple task ... there have to be all sorts of records; how many people, nurses, other patients, must have seen her there?"

"Without some formal record, it's still unreliable evidence, unless we can marshal a small herd of eye-witnesses, who is going to disbelieve a doctor of such good standing?"

Gilles de Chabot looked out of the window in thought.

"If you were found injured and unconscious, and were brought to a hospital, what would be one of the first things you would expect to have before you were given any other form of treatment?" Gilles lifted his eyebrows.

"_X-rays_," Moreau lifted his own, a smile curving the corners of his mouth. "I'd expect to be x-rayed before they did anything else, to be sure that my head wasn't about to fall off."

"And all modern technology is computer-mediated, which means there will be some log of activity somewhere," the lieutenant looked faintly smug. "I think we might need to pay a visit to the Radiology department at the Colbert," he said, getting his jacket.

###

Carrying her mug of tea in her good hand, she decided to step outside the farmhouse and investigate the immediate surrounds – perhaps some memory might jog loose if she saw something familiar. Out the front of the building was a stone-and-gravel courtyard with two pathways leading off to either side of the house. To the right, there was also a small barn with fairly new large double-doors, locked, of course. She wondered what was inside, but there were no convenient windows.

To the left of the grey stone building was another, wider pathway that led through a series of gardens. There had been some attempt to make this area pretty: an old wooden bench; an ornate iron sun dial, several enormous ceramic urns filled with flowering shrubs. One of them had a bushy growth with large creamy-white flowers; their perfume was wonderfully sweet to her. She had no idea what they were ... and then, suddenly, she did. _Gardenia_. These were her favourite blooms. _How did she know that?_ The grey mist swirled again in her head; a faint sensation of giddiness making her close her eyes and breathe deeply for a few seconds. She wondered if this were a good sign or something she should be concerned about. _A bit too late to worry about such things now_.

The path headed gently downwards, narrowing a little and there was the sound of running water. Within a few meters, she came to the overgrown bank of a substantial river and a small jetty with iron rings for boats, though none were moored there at present. It would be nice in the heat of summer to be on the river, perhaps even to go fishing. Did she fish? She had no idea.

She remembered a conversation of last night where the old woman had said something about a man keeping ducks here; she looked around. There were plenty of wide open riverbank spaces, and of course, the river itself. This would have been an idea place to breed waterfowl.

It was also a place of danger.

The river was broad and its surface smooth, but she could see the lazy-looking swirls and currents were deceptive. It was probably deep too, and it wouldn't be a simple thing to cross, by either boat or swimming. From the bank, however, it seemed like a nice place to live, especially as the farmhouse was high enough above the river to avoid flooding in the spring.

Her head was aching now and everything seemed a little blurry. Perhaps she was overdoing things; perhaps she should go and lie down for a while. It made sense and she felt sufficiently weary to acknowledge it openly.

Deciding to make it up to her bed this time, she took half of one of Thibert's painkillers; adequate to dull the aches but hopefully not enough to knock her out for hours.

It didn't even occur to her to lock the front door.

###

"What do you mean, _she left last night?_" Sherlock stared in dismay at the woman in front of them. "_You let her go?_ _In the condition she was in?_ _Dear God_," he stalked towards one of the walls holding his head with both hands. "Is there no-one in this entire place with even a _whisper_ of common-sense? _Argh!_" he took several abrupt paces away and stormed back. "Where did she go?" he demanded. "She had no money, no clothes, her memory was non-functional and she was in the company of strangers, _so where would she have gone?_"

The nurse who was, by now, already late for her shift, backed away from the tall man's outburst. He was uncomfortably intimidating.

"It's all right," John, ever the peacemaker, stepped forward, lifting his hands. "Just ignore him," he smiled at the nurse. "He gets a bit intense sometimes, but he doesn't really mean to be an idiot, _do_ you?" he asked warningly, smiling a silent threat at the younger Holmes.

Heaving a great breath, Sherlock collected himself. "Thank you, John," he huffed. "You're quite right," he smiled, with only the faintest of manic tinges to his expression. "Where would she have gone?" he asked again, softly, _carefully_. "She must have left for a reason."

"After the lady woke up from her journey down from Nevers," the nurse relaxed a fraction. "We got her into one of the small wards and I left her with another night-nurse. I think she might also have spoken with old Madame Sollan as I heard voices from outside the room, but I didn't stay there long as I had other duties."

"Where is this other nurse, and may we _please_ speak with Madame Sollan?"

"The other nurse would be Julianne Post, she'd be at home now, asleep, most likely, and I'm afraid it will be impossible for you to speak with old lady Sollan, no matter how much you might desire it."

"And why is that?" Sherlock leaned in close to her, his narrowing eyes fixed on hers.

The nurse raised her eyebrows. "Because Madame Sollan died very early this morning, Monsieur."

###

The driver dropped off another local patient to be absorbed into the all-enveloping care of the Colbert hospital and hung around with a couple of the other drivers and porters long enough to grab _un_ _café_.

Everyone who worked through the Colbert on a regular basis was accorded a small pigeonhole for mail-drops, pay sheets or the hospital newsletter. He wandered over to his and casually peered inside. A small white box awaited his attention. Making certain no-one saw, he slipped it into his pocket and walked slowly back towards the door, still sipping the aromatic brew. It wasn't until he was safely back in the cab of the Citroën that he dared take a closer look.

A white box scarcely larger than a box of matches and enclosed inside, in a small plastic bag, were two tiny white tablets, each the size of a baby's fingernail. There was also a brief note. _In liquid or by mouth_, it said. Good to know.

It had been quite a long time since he'd played the sort of game he was being asked to play now. All he had to do was find the woman and persuade her to take the pills. No problem. It might be fun, after all, she was injured; there wouldn't be much she could do to stop him.

Starting the ambulance up to head to his next collection point, the driver smiled at himself in the rear-view mirror. He always knew he should have been a doctor.

###

De Chabot and Sergeant Moreau were closeted within the Radiology department of the Colbert Hospital with the senior radiologist. She was still wearing her black suit, her hair was still tightly bunned and her expression, if anything, was more ferocious than the day before.

"Yet _more_ questions?" her eyebrows almost reached her hairline. "How am I expected to get any work done with you police forever traipsing in and out of the place?" she demanded. "Detectives everywhere I turn!"

"But Madame," Moreau smiled helpfully. "We are the first detectives to come and speak with you, so I have no idea why you are so upset."

"And what about the two that were in here _yesterday_?" the radiologist threw them a dark look. "Asking me all sorts of things about what records I had and who had been x-rayed in the last few days?"

"But _Madame_," Moreau tried again. "We are the first of the police to come here. You say there were others, yesterday?"

"A tall, dark-haired man and a shorter blonde one," she sniffed, unmollified. "The tall one seemed to know a great deal about the equipment," she waved a vague hand around the room.

"We can get to who they might be in a moment, Madame," de Chabot intervened. "However, I am more interested in what you may have been able to tell them, since we obviously have precisely the same questions."

Sighing profusely, the woman stamped away to her desk in a small, glass-enclosed office and returned with a large white envelope in her hands. "Here," she said, thrusting the envelope at Gilles. "I reprinted the films in case the first two returned," she said. "They are mostly from two days ago but are all date-stamped in any case."

Peering carefully at the enclosed sheets of exposed radiology film, it was clear they were of human bones.

"Who was the subject of these x-rays, Madame?" de Chabot needed to be sure. "Are you able to say with any confidence?"

The radiologist snorted. "Even a first year trainee can see these are of a youngish woman," she pulled one particular film out showing multiple images and held it up into the light. "Nasty break of the right ulna," she mused. "But nicely pinned," she added. "Some superficial damage to the right frontal hemisphere of the skull, three fractured ribs and a broken nose," she finished up. "Everything else was soft-tissue damage."

"And you are able to confirm this?" Moreau wanted to be absolutely positive.

"You hold the proof in your hand, you idiot," the radiologist snorted again.

"Then thank _you_, Madame," de Chabot swept her a theatrical bow as they left the unit.

Waiting until they were out of the building, Gilles pulled his phone from a pocket and rapidly connected to the Nevers office.

"Send Detectives Huot and Labar to Colbert Hospital to pick up Doctor Noel Thibert," he said. "Yes, _immediately_."


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

_Anthea, At Last – French Fuzz – Consulting Detectives – Cherchez la Femme – Interview With a Nurse – In Search of Distraction – The Artist at Home – The Value of Art Deco – Saved by the Bell._

#

#

Anthea sat at Mycroft's desk. Not doing anything, just sitting, catching her breath. In the last twenty-four hours she had dealt with over two hundred applications for classified assistance from various parts of the Northern hemisphere; one-hundred-and-thirty-four phones calls demanding confidential information; re-routed forty-odd conference calls, sat in on six of them herself; channelled top-secret reports to God-knows how many Private Committees; sent out a good couple of dozen U.N. security advisories; dealt with four ranting Ministers of the Crown and been _dear woman'd_ by the PM. And so she sat at Mycroft's desk. Not because she particularly valued sitting here or because it made her work any faster or smarter, but because everyone _outside that door _was extremely cautious about coming in unless it was vital.

She was hiding, plain and simple, and she didn't care who knew it. Her Blackberry, usually glued to her hand, rested on the shining wooden desk in front of her and was currently switched off. Anthea regarded it with deep suspicion. It had clearly become possessed by something from beyond the black abyss, assuming a life entirely of its own since yesterday when Mycroft had assigned her all his incoming communications. And it was getting worse. _He_ never seemed to be this busy. Making up her mind to implement an intellectual _triage_ from this point forward, she lifted the weighty black device and reconnected herself to the outer world.

Twenty-seven missed calls; thirteen texts with the Cabinet sigil beside them, five with digital attachments. She sighed.

Deciding to have a fast look at her own in-box for the first time since God-knew-when, Anthea scanned down a briefer list of missed calls and texts, stopping the scroll when the number of the younger Holmes appeared. Swiftly reviewing the call, Sherlock's message was typically abrupt and typically Sherlock.

_Noel Thibert_ … did she know the name? No bells jangled in her extended memory, but that meant nothing. She flicked back to the other list and then back again to Sherlock's message. Given the situation, she would be forgiven for allocating a few minutes to family, especially where it might concern Cate Holmes. The French authorities had been very polite and very kind when she had inquired about the release of the body for a return to British soil, but they had also been very unhelpful. _In due course_, they had said. _Upon the conclusion of the investigation_. All very diplomatic and all very irritating. If Sherlock might be able to speed things along … Ignoring all the other demands on her time, Anthea bent her head to his request.

###

John looked up at the high ceiling of the hospital foyer and sighed dispiritedly. Every step of the way had brought only more obstacles … they still didn't know for sure that the mysterious woman they'd been trailing was in fact Cate – it might equally be some poor French housewife who was simply in the wrong place at the same time. He scrubbed at his face with his hands.

"Can you give us the address of this other nurse from last night?" he asked, knowing immediately that they couldn't. No hospital would give out the address of an employee. He must be more tired than he thought.

"I'm sorry, Monsieur, _but_ …" the Ward Sister lifted her hands and shook her head. Of course she couldn't.

"Taxi?" Sherlock stood bolt upright. "Is there a taxi-rank anywhere around here?"

"There is one just out to the side here, Monsieur," the woman nodded, happy to be the bearer of more positive information. "Step outside of the main door here and turn left. There is normally a taxi or two further down the road there."

Nodding and whirling back out through the doors in the same abrupt sweep, Sherlock realised the taxi-rank was bereft of cabbies at this time of day.

There was only one thing for it now.

"We have to speak to the police," he muttered, scanning the length of the road for any white cars that might feasibly be a French taxi. "I need to speak to the other nurse and I need to find out where the taxi took the mysterious patient and for that, I need the power of the police."

"How do you know the woman took a taxi?" he asked. "You said yourself; she had no money, no memory, so why on earth would she be after a cab? Where would she go?"

"She had to have gone somewhere, some distance from this place or she would have been found by now," Sherlock flattened his palms together, pointing them both at his companion. "She was too injured and weak to walk very far or very fast, nor did she have clothes, although I suspect she may have liberated some shoes and perhaps a coat or some other hospital gear before she left. She had to be going _somewhere_, John. _Somewhere_," he paused, drawing a sharp breath. "Someone helped her last night, either by taking her with them, or with a lift to a place only she knew about, or with money for a cab, which is why we have to speak to the other nurse and why we need the police."

"Then let's go talk to the local fuzz," John looked at his tourist map and pointed back the way they'd come. "Down that way."

###

"_Preposterous_," Doctor Noel Thibert sat in one of the interview rooms. "These things you are say, that you are _accusing_ me of doing are entirely preposterous," he added. "If you insist upon this tedious behaviour, I will have little option but to summon my legal counsel."

"Perhaps you should do that, Monsieur le Docteur," Sergeant Moreau sat opposite the man and scanned through the accumulated statements of the men on the rescue teams; nurses at the Colbert; a porter who wheeled patients around. "Because all of these things I have here tell me that the only thing in this room that is preposterous is your determination to continue lying to us," he closed the folder and crossed his arms. "Why _is_ that, I wonder?"

Thibert sighed ostentatiously. "As I have already made it clear to you, _Sergeant_," he came down heavily on the title. "I have never seen nor had any dealings with this woman who you say was admitted to the Colbert on the day of the accident," he paused. "It may be that she was actually admitted, but I have had nothing to do with any accident victim and, in fact, did not even know about such a patient until you yourself told me of her existence."

"We have sworn statements from a variety of hospital employees to the opposite effect, Doctor Thibert," Claude caught the man's eyes. "These people could not all have been wrong, surely?"

"That's precisely what they are, and I have no idea why they are attempting to paint me as the villain in this situation," Thibert ran fingers through his hair and looked exasperated.

Moreau had to give it to the man; he was a pretty good actor. Perhaps it was because he was a doctor: they were all trained not to give things away.

"Then what do you say to this, eh?" Moreau handed over the reprinted x-ray film with the multiple images.

Taking a pair of slim reading-glasses from his breast pocket, Thibert scanned the film expertly. "Looks like a woman," he said, peering between the shots. "Some damage to her right arm, ribs, fractured nose, bump to the head, by the looks of things," he added. "So?"

"So this is the patient you say you never met and had nothing to do with," Claude folded his arms again. "Does this refresh your memory at all?"

"Sorry, no," Thibert smiled sadly as he shook his head. "Not one of mine."

"Thank you, Doctor," Moreau stood, finally impatient with the man. "Please make yourself comfortable, I will be a short while," he added, walking to the door.

"Am I free to go?" Thibert asked nonchalantly.

"Not just yet, there are a few more questions we have for you, so please bear with us for a little longer as we continue the investigation, if you wouldn't mind."

Shrugging, but with a more relaxed expression on his face, Thibert sat deeper in his seat and folded his arms. There was nothing with his name on it. _They had no proof of anything_. They would have to let him leave. He smiled.

Staring at the man from the other side of the mirrored glass of the interview room, Gilles de Chabot was mildly irked. Thibert was lying; he knew it, Claude knew it. The question was_ why?_ The lieutenant had already summoned an entire review of the doctor's personal and professional history in case something leaped out, but the only thing so far that sounded an unquiet note was the death, possibly by suicide, of his young wife some seven years earlier. There was no suggestion that Thibert had anything to do with his wife's demise, on the contrary; it appeared that he harboured a not inconsiderable obsession for her memory.

There was no specific event that de Chabot could put a finger on and ask if there was a connection between it and the woman Thibert was doing his utmost to disown. He nibbled the end of a thumb. If they couldn't find some substantive evidence or something to charge him with, they'd have to let him leave by tomorrow morning, and judges of French courts frowned on officers of the Sûreté who kept dragging in members of the professional classes without really good reason.

The phone on his desk rang and he answered with half his mind still going through Thibert's history.

"_Allo?_ Lieutenant de Chabot? This is Sergeant Charles Pohlest in Cusset … I have … an unusual situation down here that perhaps you might be able to help me with."

"I am in the middle of an interrogation, Pohlest; can I call you back?" Gilles frowned.

"This is in regards to a woman who came to Cusset last night from a hospital in Nevers," the Cusset officer added. "Would this be of any interest you?"

"You have the woman there?" de Chabot was on his feet, a faraway look in his eyes. The greatest eyewitness of them all … _the victim_.

"That is the problem," Pohlest admitted. "I have two men here, British men, who claim to have been following a lead on a relative of theirs who was on your train wreck and who, for some reason, has apparently been shipped down here by a doctor at one of your hospitals. Does this make any sense to you?"

Nodding and beckoning the just-appeared Moreau further into his office, de Chabot lifted his eyebrows. "These men," he continued the phone-conversation. "Is one tall and dark and the other shorter and blonde?"

"So you _do_ know them," Pohlest sounded relieved. "I confess their story sounded a little complicated for us simple country folk."

"I've not met the gentlemen in your office," Gilles snorted at the _country-folk_ epithet. Vichy citizens were as wily as foxes and tough as old boots. "But I've been following on their heels for the last three days it seems, are they there?"

… a hiatus as the phone was transferred.

"Lieutenant Gilles de Chabot, I presume?" Idiomatic French with the merest hint of a British accent. "I am Sherlock Holmes, a Consulting Detective with Scotland Yard and I and my colleague are tracking my sister-in-law who was involved in the train tragedy. Our investigations have brought us to Cusset, but now we need the Sûreté's assistance."

"The name of your relative," de Chabot paused. "It wouldn't be Catherine _Holmes_, by any chance, would it? The same one whose husband came to Nevers the night of the wreck? I'm sorry, but she is dead, Monsieur; we have her body in the hospital morgue. "

"The man you met is my brother, Lieutenant," the Briton's voice sounded softer, more thoughtful. "And we do not believe Cate to be dead but rather … to have been _manoeuvred_ out of the way for some, as yet unknown reason. The body in your morgue is that of another, unidentified female."

"If you are so convinced of this, then why do you need the Sûreté's help now, after all you've done by yourself, Monsieur?" de Chabot was curious.

"I need to find the mystery woman and identify her with my own eyes," Sherlock acknowledged, "although each piece of evidence we have found points us in the same direction. I also need to speak to an off-duty nurse here in Cusset; she may know where the patient has gone, but nobody will give me the nurse's contact details. Additionally, we need to contact any taxis who took fares from Cusset hospital last night to some local address."

"Is that all?" de Chabot sounded undecided. "You're not requesting police assistance, just permission to speak to people?"

"If someone could contact the local taxi-drivers, it would be a help," Sherlock wasn't about to stand in the way of anyone doing the grunt-work. "But I want to interview the nurse in person, if that could be arranged."

"As long as you are happy to share any information with us, I see no reason to stand in your way, although an officer will need to accompany you at all times to make it all official."

"The Sûreté is welcome to whatever information it wants, as long as we are allowed to pursue our own line of investigation," Sherlock was starting to feel impatient. "But there may be danger attached to Cate Holme's continued existence and every minute is precious, Lieutenant."

"_Danger?_ How so?"

"Doctor Thibert has lied fundamentally and repeatedly about an injured patient whom he has already seen fit to move in a precipitous and life-endangering manner; how is it going to go with him when his actions come to light? If the man is prepared to do what he has already shown himself capable of doing, then what actions might conceivably be beyond his execution? We need to find Cate Holmes sooner rather than later, Lieutenant de Chabot; will you help?"

"Put me back to Pohlest," Gilles had already made up his mind, and in the following fifteen seconds made it clear what assistance the Cusset police could do to further the resolution of the Nevers train investigation.

Replacing the phone, Charles Pohlest turned to the two Britons and nodded briefly. "Okay," he said. "What's the name of the nurse?"

###

The driver walked into the ambulance entrance around the back of Cusset Hospital. He had been here so many times before he was part of the scenery, but even had he been spotted, nobody would have taken the slightest notice. He was either dropping off or picking up and it was no business of anyone's which it was.

Strolling innocently along the silent hallways, he peered in one room after the next. If anyone asked, he could say he was looking for an old patient-friend of his, wanting to say _hello_ and catch up. Not many came here to see these oldies anymore; a visitor was always welcome.

Past room after room, there was no end of grey hair and wrinkled hands, but his goal was something altogether less ancient and bloodless. He stopped prowling and sighed, irritated; sooner or later he'd be asked what he was doing and a constant search, even if it didn't look like a search, was going to be questioned. Walking around the place was getting him nowhere; he needed a plan. He needed to find out where the woman was being kept and what was happening to her. There was only one place where such information was rapidly known and often freely given: Main Reception.

Tucking his hands in his pockets, the driver strolled down the shallow steps towards the main foyer at the front of the building. He would soon find out where the woman was.

As usual, the place was virtually deserted. The cheap plastic seats were empty and there were only two women, deep in whispered conversation behind the reception counter.

"Hello, _ladies_," he strolled up and rested a casual elbow on the marble counter-top. "You look as thick as thieves, what's going on?"

"Nobody waiting for you to drive them away?" the receptionist looked at him and sniffed. _He had a reputation, this one_.

"Not right this second, no," he smiled lazily back at the obnoxious old trout. "But I'm getting the feeling that something's going on around here, what is it?" he allowed a note of genuine curiosity to creep into his words.

The other woman, an admin assistant by the looks of things, was less cautious than her older friend. Smiling coyly, she leaned against the other side of the counter.

"One of the patients _disappeared_ last night," she hissed, scandalised. "Looks like they simply up and walked right out the front doors; there's all sorts of trouble about it."

"One of the oldies got up and left the place?" the driver raised his brows. "Would any of them even be capable?"

"No, not one of the oldies," the receptionist joined the conversation, unwilling to be left out. "A woman who'd been in an accident and who'd come down here from Nevers yesterday got up and walked out by herself," she whispered, as if even the notion of such a thing was too outrageous to speak of in a normal voice.

The driver felt a pulse of irritation. The woman he'd been sent to find. _Vanished_. A tight curl of annoyance flickered through his chest.

"Where'd she go?" he asked, plausibly interested. "Does anyone know?"

"Nobody knows," the admin replied. "Nobody knows where she came from, either, except it was down from Nevers yesterday afternoon sometime," she paused, looking at him. "You deliver from Nevers, don't you?" she asked. "Did _you_ bring her down?"

The driver inhaled and shook his head. "Not me," he said. "Had a bit of business south of here yesterday; just come here now to see if there were any jobs going."

"There's no jobs here for you today," the receptionist sounded cool. "The police were here earlier and it looks like they want to speak with Juli Post – she was the one the missing woman spoke to last night. The patient was a stranger to Vichy; nobody knows where she went after she left here."

"But they think Juli might, I see," the driver nodded. He wouldn't mind having a word with her himself.

###

The Cusset Sûreté were pleasingly co-operative and Sherlock made a note to advise Lestrade the next time they met; it would not do for servants of the Crown to be shown up by a small country office of French coppers.

Nursing Sister Julienne Post was laughably easy to find – she was in the telephone book. Answering Pohlest's ringing of her doorbell, the woman's voice sounded strange until the door opened fully and it became clear she'd been asleep. People working nights tended to do that, she told him, a little sarcastically.

Apologising profusely for having disturbed her rest, the French detective asked if she wouldn't mind speaking with someone who was trying to find the mysterious patient.

"No problem," Juli Post yawned. She needed coffee to wake herself up. She beckoned them all inside.

Refusing the offer of coffee, Sherlock met her bleary eyes. "What do you remember about the woman who came in yesterday from Nevers hospital?" he asked.

"The woman with the badly bruised face and the cast arm?" she was silent, clearly thinking. "Not much, really," she said, eventually. "I remember she said she had lost her memory of anything before the train crash ..."

"So she definitely was in the train wreck?" John wanted confirmation. "She was sure?"

"Oh yes, Monsieur," the nurse nodded. "The woman said that the main hospital in Nevers had been full of accident victims and so they'd put her in the Colbert."

"Describe her for me," Sherlock also sought a form of confirmation.

Screwing up her forehead, Julienne Post frowned. "She seemed quite young, around forty or so," she said. "It was hard to see as her face was so bruised and swollen from the impact," she met Sherlock's gaze. "She'd hit her head, you see," she added.

"Yes, yes; hit her head. What else?" Sherlock all but snapped the question.

Taking a breath and frowning a bit more, the nurse closed her eyes. "About my height, slim, dark brown hair nearly to the shoulder, dark eyes ..." she shook her head. "That's all I can remember, sorry."

"Did she say why she had come to Vichy?" Sherlock almost held his breath.

Juli Post shook her head regretfully. "There was nothing that I can remember," she said. "Maybe something about coming to Vichy for a reason, but ... no, I can't recall her saying anything more specific than that. I'm sorry."

"And you have absolutely no idea where she might have gone, or if she had arranged to stay with anyone?" Sherlock pressed.

"I know she was chatting with Nance Sollan ..." the nurse paused. "Poor old Nance," she added sadly.

"And Madame Sollan died last night, so no help there, either," Sherlock stared out of the curtained window, missing the sharp look the nurse gave him.

"Not too good, Sherlock," John murmured quietly. "The missing woman is his sister-in-law and he's really quite worried about her," he explained to the others.

Both the nurse and Charles Pohlest nodded understandingly. People were often rude when they were anxious.

Catching their expression, Sherlock opened his mouth to contradict their clear belief, when he shut it again. _Let it be Cate_, he thought. _For Mycroft's sake_.

"Then we shall have to rest our hopes on the taxi-drivers of Cusset," he smiled, a little stiffly as Pohlest handed the nurse one of his cards. "Shall we go?"

###

Mycroft had slipped out of the townhouse while the morning light was still grey. He had barely slept, the crushing weight of loss with him at every breath. Knowing he was a coward of the worst kind, he nevertheless left his sleeping children undisturbed. Just give them one more day of ignorance; he would tell them tonight, giving him the day to prepare for the ghastly ordeal.

Entering his private office suite he saw Anthea looked about as ragged as he felt. Dark shadows hovered beneath her eyes and her face was pale and drawn. She had not slept either and by the looks of things, had been at the office all night.

"You need rest," he told her. "Go home, come back tomorrow."

"I'm not the only one who needs sleep," she said, taking in the strained lines and pallor of his complexion and the redness of his eyes.

"I've had as much sleep as I'm likely to get," he shook his head at her. "Go home and come back later if you must," he said. "I need to take up the reins you have so clearly held for me," he smiled faintly. "Thank you, now go," he pointed to the door.

Blinking tiredly at him, Anthea shrugged and headed out of the room. There was no need to walk him through the work she had been doing; he would understand each situation the moment he read it. And she really was dreadfully tired. Just a couple of hours sleep and she'd return to help him carry on a little bit longer.

Sighing, he sat at his desk noticing immediately that his assistant had been sitting here for some time during the previous night. The desk-blotter was two-centimetres closer to the edge and the carpet pile beneath his feet had changed.

Pulling up the current state-of-play on his Blackberry he felt a wave of relief at the crowded mass of requests and messages waiting for him. Anthea had done a stirling job to keep things down to this level, but he knew the next several hours would require his complete attention and for this he was glad. Anything that might distract his wayward thoughts...

Sorting all the waiting tasks according to his own code of varying urgency, Mycroft began picking up the intricate pieces of his world.

It was well into the afternoon when he came to the original message from Sherlock – he would have seen it earlier, but Anthea had moved it into her _pending response_ folder, and there had been no sign of his brother's name.

Noel Thibert ... Mycroft pondered. The name was unfamiliar to him, but as he read through the data thus far accumulated by Anthea, he felt an odd prickle at the base of his neck.

Thibert had been married briefly but his wife had died when the car she had been driving veered over the edge of a sheer drop, causing the vehicle to explode upon impact and killing her instantly. The data file gave the dates of her birth and death.

His skin prickled some more. The wife's first name was Madelaine, but her _maiden_ name had been _Shaw_.

Lifting the Blackberry to his ear, he called one of his swifter researchers. "Find out anything you can about Madelaine Shaw, especially her death," he directed, adding the dates. "Quickly, please."

With a brief sigh, he turned his awareness back to the accumulation of tasks others felt merited his attention. Within ten minutes, he had weeded out and refused the obviously impossible or constitutionally suicidal; reframed the remaining demands into requests and pushed another thirty percent of those in different directions, while redirecting the larger portion of governmental petitions into either a tight holding-pattern where they would spontaneously self-resolve within the following twenty-four hours, or into the last of his holding-areas; the place where his real work waited for him.

Lifting the red telephone on his desk, he began to remove the first of these issues. In a matter of seconds, he was speaking with his agents in Korea, both parts.

###

She awoke, her mouth dry and her head woolly, but at least the pain was less than it had been and there was even an element of real comfort in her bed, which was a first since the accident. Stretching carefully, she rinsed her face in the bathroom and waked slowly down the stairs to the kitchen. The Aga was in the black again, so she fed it thoroughly this time, hoping there would be no further need until she went to bed that night.

Exploring through the farmhouse again, her feet led her unthinkingly back to her studio. Feeling more alert and at ease now than she had the first time she came in here, she wondered it might be good therapy to try painting something a little more comprehensive than a small daub.

Examining some of the finished pieces stacked against the walls, she realised that, far from being of the post-modernist school, she painted more as an informed impressionist than anything else. The subtlety of colour, the clever brushwork, the ease of detail. If it hadn't been her own work, she would have felt quite impressed by it all. The trick now though, was could he still do it?

Deciding to go for broke; she set up an easel, a little awkwardly with only one hand. Locating a medium-sized prepared canvass, she inspected it closely, realising she must have primed it earlier. She smiled. This was handy; it meant she could get right to work. Deciding to paint whatever was outside one of the windows, she cast about for a trayful of oils in greens and blacks and browns.

After blocking out the larger areas of light and shade, she set out the major features within her framed view; the bank of green shrubbery; the darker layer of soil and earth, the highlights of flowers. It was a fairly routine, domestic scene, but if she could paint this, then she could paint anything.

It wasn't until she was well into the work that she realised she'd been using her left hand the entire time, never once feeling any urge to use her injured arm. She lifted her eyebrows and smiled. _She was left-handed._ Not that there was anything special about the fact, but it was new knowledge and it made her oddly happy. Continuing with her artistic experiment, she added a few tiny splashes of pure _blanco_ as highlighted petals ... and stood back, cleaning her brush.

Two facts became immediately evident.

One; she could still paint. Regardless of the subject-matter, the result of her spontaneous art-class had produced a very decent rendering of the view through one of the smaller studio windows. It was subtle, attractive and of a professional level. She nodded, pleased.

The second fact was that the style of this painting was completely different to anything else in the entire studio. Not that it was worse, exactly, but it was painted from an entirely unrelated mind set. This was disconcerting. Had the blow to her head affected her ability to paint? To a professional artist, that would be career-death. She looked at the drying painting. Hopefully, this would be a passing phase; hopefully she would regain an ability to paint as she had before. If _not_...

There was a loud knocking at the front door.

Opening it, she saw a medium-sized delivery van reversing closer to the entrance. It stopped and a smiling man came out with an electronic delivery-pad.

"If you could just sign here, Madame," he said, offering her a small stylus. She signed, looking back at the van. "What are you bringing me?" she was curious.

"Delivery from a Ms Christine Allane," he said, checking the pad. "_Essential supplies_, it says," he lifted his eyebrows, noting her injuries. "Want me to bring all the stuff inside for you?" he asked. "Doesn't look like you'd be up to much for the moment."

"If you could bring it in for me," she smiled, holding the front-door wide. "It would be a huge help, yes."

It took the man two trips to bring in all the large cardboard boxes full of groceries and fresh comestibles. It looked like there was everything she might possibly need in terms of supplies to last her at least a week, probably longer.

"There's a second delivery coming a bit later," the man advised her. "They're bringing some medicines and stuff for you," he added. "We're not allowed to mix groceries and pharmacy items in the same delivery, see?"

"Thank you," she said. "I'll be waiting for the next one, thank you very much for your help," she added, holding the door open as he left.

As the van made off down the bumpy lane, she turned back inside to see what Christine had deemed _essential_ supplies.

Milk, bottled water, fresh ground coffee, bread, brioche and croissants; a whole pile of stuff she couldn't remember if she ate or not. An entire cold roast chicken of such enormous proportions it was more like a small turkey. Fruit, vegetables, chocolate. She smiled at the last. It was her favourite kind; very dark, very bitter.

The smallest box held a bottle of armagnac and another of good champagne; several bottles of what looked to be an exceeding decent Burgundy and a large bottle of gin. _Did she even drink this stuff?_

Apparently Christine Allane thought she did. Oh well, later, perhaps.

###

Sherlock was standing, staring restlessly out into the early evening from the offices of the Cusset Sûreté. There were only two taxi companies who normally traded in the hospital district, and there weren't even that many drivers, but trying to track them all down was turning into a nightmare.

Half of them didn't have their radios on and of the ones who did, two were at lunch and not responding to calls, another was off fishing ... _fishing_ ... Sherlock almost spat the word and one was already at the Sûreté office himself – arrested for speeding. He was in a cell, asleep.

At this rate, it could be hours before they were all accounted for.

John had given up trying to keep the peace and sat outside Pohlest's office drinking coffee. He would have preferred tea, but every time he tried to get some, people kept asking him if he were feeling ill. That was the only time people around there drank the stuff, apparently. The coffee was pretty good though, which kind of compensated for the absence of tea.

About to launch into a heated tirade about the incompetencies of the French police, Sherlock halted as Pohlest's phone rang.

It was Julienne Post.

"I remembered something else!" her excited voice was loud enough for others in the office to hear, but Pohlest put the call on the speaker in any case.

"Remembered what, precisely, Mademoiselle Post?" Charles Pohlest pressed two keys that would activate the call-recording facility.

"I remembered something the missing woman said before I left the room," the nurse was almost babbling with determination to get everything out as speedily as she could. "She said she remembered a place on the river somewhere, and Madame Sollan said it used to be a farm where someone called Bertrand Amar used to breed ducks," she almost shouted the name.

Focusing all his attention on the call, Sherlock shoved his hands in his pockets. "Did the woman say anything else," he asked. "Anything at all that might be used to identify her?"

Juli Post's voice faltered as she thought. "Non, Monsieur," she sounded like she was shaking her head. "Although ... there was _one_ other little detail I remembered, but it is probably not important."

"Anything might be important; tell me _now_ ... _please_," Sherlock added the last word on catching John's eye.

"I remembered her earrings," she said. "I noticed them particularly because I wondered if she wanted help taking them out; they were stud earrings, you see," she added. "Not easy to take out with only one hand working."

"What did they look like, these earrings?" Sherlock's voice turned very soft now. The last thing he wanted was for the nurse to lose her thread of thought. "Describe them to me."

"They looked like they were big oblong diamond studs," Post was clear. "Only they couldn't have been real diamond because they were big and if they were real, they'd have been worth a fortune."

"Were these diamonds set in gold or silver?" Sherlock turned to meet his friend's gaze; the expression on the taller man's face had John put his coffee back down and hold his breath for some reason.

"It wasn't gold," the nurse said. "But it didn't look like silver, either; the metal was darker than silver. I think it was more like platinum."

"Was the edging a little wider on the narrow sides than on the long sides? Can you remember?" Sherlock's voice sounded oddly tight.

"Why ... yes. I believe they were; very _Art Deco_, I thought at the time," Juli Post smiled down the phone. "Have I helped at all?" she asked.

###

He had dealt with everything that needed his attention, even several things that didn't. There was no reason for him to linger any further in his office.

He had to go home.

The knowledge of what would happen once he reached the townhouse and made contact with his children made him nauseous. That he was about to brutally destroy their happy young lives was as painful a thought to him as the original cause.

He couldn't stay here forever, and yet he found himself searching for any reason not to leave. But it was to no purpose. He was damned either way. The Jaguar took him silently home.

Opening the front door, Mycroft realised that if he dwelt on this, he would lose any resemblance of coherence; it this awful thing must be done, then better it be done swiftly and cleanly.

Walking into the kitchen where the twins were sat eating their evening meal, Nora Compton took one look at his face and covered her mouth with her hand. She had struggled to remain calm, and thank goodness the children were more than able to entertain themselves these days, for it had been a task beyond her this day.

"_Daddy!_" Jules flung himself down from his chair and demanded to be picked up. It would have been impossible for Mycroft not to do so even on an ordinary evening, and this was surely not that. The sensation of his son's small arms wrapped tightly around his neck ramped up the sense of panic he had felt earlier. Mycroft closed his eyes and hugged his child hard.

"Where's Mummy?" Blythe was looking around his back to see if Cate was just behind him. Her voice was filled with curiosity that he was here alone. "Is she coming later?"

_Blythe_, of course, it would have to be his daughter, she who was too much like himself not to see, not to _observe_.

Taking hold of both their hands, Mycroft drew them with him into the main lounge where he sat them together on the sofa. Kneeling on the floor right in front of them, he leaned forward, holding them both within the shelter of his long arms.

Mycroft's stomach roiled; he felt sweat at his temples. _Oh God,_ _he was going to break their hearts_.

"My darlings," his voice was barely more than a whisper. "There has been a very bad accident," he paused. "Mummy was on a train in France and the train crashed ..."

His Blackberry rang. _Jesus Christ._ _Not now, not now, not when he had already started..._

"Answer the phone, Daddy," Blythe said quietly. "It might be Mummy in the hospital."

About to tell his child that her mother was far beyond medical care, his nerve failed him, Blythe's blue stare demolishing his veneer of courage in an instant.

Closing his eyes in defeat, he took out his Blackberry. "_Yes?_" it was no more than a croak.

"_Mycroft!_ Cate is alive; she's somewhere near Vichy, but she's alive, Mycroft, do you understand?" Sherlock's voice was very clear at the other end of the phone. "_Cate is alive!_"


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

_Alive – The Saving of a Heart – Sending Help – The Paterfamilias Amar – A Conversation Overheard – Mycroft Unchained – Final Delivery._

#

#

_Alive?_ Cate was _alive?_ Mycroft felt his breathing falter as his body turned first to ice and then to fire.

"Is it Mummy?" Blythe was very serious, her eyes wide and frightened. Jules just looked horribly uncertain. "Is that Mummy on the phone?"

Finding his daughter's gaze, Mycroft stared at her, unable, for the moment, to formulate the necessary words. He shook his head slowly. "It's Uncle Sherlock," he husked. "He's in France with Uncle John and they're … looking after Mummy, but I have to go there too," his words were whispers. "Can you both be very brave and take care of Nanny Nora for me while I go and get Mummy?" he asked, softly. "Will you be good until I come back?"

Finding her brother's hand, Blythe nodded solemnly as Julius started to whimper. "Don't cry," she said, tugging his arm and, by extension, his entire body, close to her side. "There's no need to cry, Jules," she said, already taking on the role of big sister. "Everything will be alright."

Mycroft closed his eyes, hearing Cate's voice in those words. _Cate_. _Alive_. His hand was clenched tight around his phone and Sherlock was still there.

"Where, _how?_" he returned the phone to his ear and gritted the words through a tight jaw. "Where are you?" There was not the slightest doubt in his mind that Sherlock was correct; his brother would not have been so specific without evidence.

"Cusset, outside of Vichy," Sherlock was very calm. "There has been a conspiracy of silence, and I am waiting on information from Anthea which may go some way to resolving the mystery."

"You asked for details on a Noel Thibert, a French doctor," Mycroft was on his feet now. "The man's wife died."

"Yes. There has to be a connection between either this man and you, or him and Cate. I somehow doubt it would be Cate," Sherlock's tone was dry.

"Thibert's wife was Madelaine Shaw before she married him," Mycroft gathered his scrambled thoughts. "There was an incident eight years ago where I had a man court-martialled and gaoled," Mycroft recalled the day as clear as if it were yesterday. "His name was Shaw."

"The connection?" Sherlock needed details.

"I've got people on it," Mycroft acknowledged. "I shall fly to France immediately. Where is Cate?"

"We have the approximate locale and will undoubtedly find her soon," Sherlock paused. There was no way to make this any better than it was. "Mycroft, Cate has amnesia," he said. "She doesn't know who she is."

"Is she badly injured?" Mycroft felt himself reel at the appalling notion that Cate might be alive but dreadfully hurt. He wanted to roar in frustration. He wanted a magic carpet to bring him to her side in seconds, not hours.

"Nothing permanently disabling that we know of," the younger Holmes was thankful for that small mercy; his brother's tone was already ominous. "But John believes she should be in hospital."

Feeling the air leave his lungs, Mycroft forced himself not to shout. "_Why is Cate not in hospital?_"

"She ran away, Mycroft, look, John and I have to _go_; we don't think she's out of danger yet. Go to Nevers; speak with Lieutenant Gilles de Chabot at the Sûreté offices, he'll fill you in on the details. They have Thibert there but he's being unco-operative."

And then there was silence. Sherlock was gone.

His heart beating almost too hard for his chest to contain, he knelt down again, reaching for the childrens' hands and held them in his own, careful not to squeeze too tight. He met two pairs of eyes, both wide and frightened. He forced himself to relax and smile.

"I am going to get in a big helicopter and go to France to get Mummy and bring her back," he said carefully. "She is going to be in hospital when we come back, and as soon as she's well enough, we can all go and see her together, but until then you are going to have to be very grown-up because Mummy is going to need all the help we can give her."

The twins gave him identical nods. Despite everything, he couldn't help the genuine smile that twitched his lips. They were trying so hard to be brave.

"Can I come with you in the big hecolopter, daddy?" Jules' expression was no longer fearful. _Just like Cate_. Mycroft's chest tightened again.

"Not this time, Jules. You two have to look after everything for me here."

Another pair of nods.

"Then go and finish your dinner and do everything Nanny Nora tells you to do," he said, pulling them off the sofa and towards the kitchen.

Nora was waiting, probably for tears and wailing infants, but she was surprised. Her eyes turned sharply to Mycroft.

"I've just had a phone call from Sherlock," he said by way of explanation. "There was a mistake. He and John are in France looking for Cate … she's alive."

Covering her mouth again, she leaned against his chest, an abrupt sob breaking free.

"It's all right, Nora," his words were as gentle as the hand that brushed her shoulder. "Everything's going to be alright."

"And we're going to be very good until Mummy comes home," Blythe announced, so there would be no misunderstanding about it.

"My clever girl," Mycroft brushed a strand of fine brown hair from her face, so like her mother's. "I have to go now, but I'll be back very soon."

Kneeling, he gathered the twins into a tight hug, kissing them both before standing and heading for the door, phone already at his ear.

###

"It's a bloody big river," John rested both hands on his hips as he took in the large area map Pohlest had spread over one of the empty desks. "And it's got two sides."

"Yes, thank you for that, John," Sherlock placed his hands either side of the detailed chart, his eyes narrowed as he scanned a length of the River Allier stretching between _Saint-Germain-des-Fossés_ in the north, running down to _Saint-Yorre_ in the south; a span of not less than twenty kilometres and, as John had so helpfully remarked, there were two banks.

It could take days to find a farm that had been used for breeding waterfowl. Odds were, half of the current inhabitants of the area bred ducks.

"We have to narrow down the search-area," he said, "or we'll be here all day," swivelling on his toes, he all but pounced on the Frenchman. "Local census records, anything going back at least to the war?" he demanded.

"But of course, Monsieur Holmes," Charles Pohlest nodded, "but why?"

"The nurse said Cate had been talking to an old woman, 'poor old Nance Sollan' she called her," Sherlock's eyes flashed. "She said that Madame Sollan _remembered_ a place on the river, _remembered_, _past _tense, suggesting that such an enterprise no longer exists," he paused, his long fingers tracing the sinuous curves of the Allier. "If it no longer exists today, then when? If Nance Sollan recalls it as a vague memory, then it must be some time ago, probably when she herself was very young …"

"Which would be around the time of World War Two," John nodded, understanding. "So … old records, Church documents, births deaths and marriages, stuff like that?"

"Exactly stuff like that," Sherlock grinned. "We need to find where the _Famille Amar_ was located and the farm should be somewhere reasonably close. He swung back to Pohlest. "Well?" he demanded. "Old records?"

"There are the council records that date back for several hundred years, Monsieur," the Sûreté detective shrugged. "But we will have to go to the offices in the morning … they close at four, and it is now after five o'clock." He shrugged again, a mannerism that was already beginning to lose its charm for John.

"Then we shall have to get them _unlocked_," Sherlock pulled out his Blackberry and rang his brother for the second time in thirty minutes.

The emergency PUMA Eurocopter, a substantial, long-distance beast was already waiting for him at the City Airport by the time the Jaguar wound its way out of London peak traffic. Pulling to a halt virtually beneath its rotors, Mycroft swung himself out of the car and up the three steps into the huge cabin without pause, his phone ringing as he buckled in.

"That will be arranged," he said, ending the one call from his brother only to initiate another to the French Minister of the Interior.

For a private trip, the usual flight path would be from London to Paris to Nevers; flying time between London and Paris was normally just under an hour, and then another hour from Orly to reach Fourchambault, but Mycroft had no tolerance now for niceties and would fly a direct route. While arranging to have the Council Offices at Vichy re-opened, he also demanded _carte blanche_ for all of his flights in French air-space for the next twenty-four hours, which caused a little bit of a stir in the ministerial camp until the Minister gave in and awarded Mycroft temporary French citizenship. The only laws he'd be breaking now were air-traffic, and those could be … allayed.

The super-powerful helicopter tore through the darkening skies of Northern Europe towards its destination. On a direct path between London and Nevers, it would reach Fourchambault in a little over ninety-minutes, but still, Mycroft willed it faster.

His heart was in danger but he would find her.

###

Thibert had been sitting in Number Three Interview room for almost four hours but not for even a moment in all that time did he give any indication of guilt. The worst thing he had done in all that time was check his watch.

"We have him for another fourteen hours and then we'll have to let him go and unless he feels like confessing in the near future, there's not going to be a lot we can do to get him back," de Chabot rubbed his face with a rough hand. "And the damnable thing is we all know he is playing us, that he knows about the woman, probably knows where she's gone, even, but we don't have a thing to link his name and her existence."

"And he looks the type who bruises easily, too," Claude Moreau had an old-fashioned expression on his face. "I could find out, if you like?" he murmured, sipping yet another coffee and dying for a smoke. "I could take him for a little walk to stretch his legs and see how clumsy he is when he falls over in the car park a few times."

Smiling, despite himself, Gilles shook his head. "Tempting though it is, we're not going to reduce ourselves to his level tonight."

His desk-phone rang.

"Ah, _Detective Holmes_," de Chabot smiled briefly. "I was wondering when we might be hearing from you in Cusset. How are you getting on with our country cousins?"

"I fear we may be deported once we have concluded this investigation," Sherlock acknowledged. "My colleague advises me people are reluctant to do things that are forced upon them, especially when those doing the enforcing are foreign."

"And even more especially when those foreigners are _British_," Gilles laughed. "Do not be overly concerned: I am sure the Cusset citizenry will recover. Do you need my help again?"

"I am sending some to you this time," Sherlock said. "My brother Mycroft, whom I believe you've already met, is flying back. I believe he will want a few moments with Doctor Thibert."

"We have met," de Chabot recalled the event only a few nights previous. "He was deeply distressed at the news of his wife."

"Cate isn't dead, Lieutenant," Sherlock reiterated. "Everything we've found points us to that conclusion; we're closing in on her probable location as we speak."

"But if your sister-in-law is alive, then why hasn't she come forward? Why hasn't she made her situation known?"

"Cate's _medical_ situation suggests that she is suffering from some form of amnesia, in which case she wouldn't know what to say or to whom," the younger Holmes reasoned. "We have to find her before she loses herself completely."

"Then if, as you say, Catherine Homes is alive, we need a new name for the body we have in the morgue," Gilles clamped down on a yawn. There had been fewer than eight hours sleep in nearly three days and his body was letting him know it was about to become obstructive. "The ticket of the passenger beside her on the train was in the name of Tallis Varon, but it was she whom we thought had managed to escape from the front carriage before the fire took it. Are you saying now that the body in the morgue is Varon?"

"That is precisely what I'm saying," Sherlock was firm.

"Then why was she wearing your sister-in-law's rings?" the Sûreté detective felt that the desire for his brother's wife to be alive was clouding the Briton's judgement.

"Before you accuse me of wistful thinking, Lieutenant," the younger Holmes was swift to interject. "I suggest you ask that question of Mycroft when he arrives as he will likely have more details than I, a fact which I find deeply objectionable and more than usually irritating."

"It is to be hoped he may assist us with that, yes," de Chabot sounded weary.

"I think my brother may be able to help you more than you imagine. I wish you luck with him," Sherlock ended the call.

It was odd, but de Chabot could have sworn the Briton had been on the edge of laughter.

###

She had managed to put most of the groceries away and was currently in the process of making an omelette for her dinner. Opening a bottle of wine had been tricky with only one hand but she had persevered with the old trick of turning the bottle upside down and tapping the base with a book until the cork emerged enough to pull off with her fingers.

Chewing on a chunk of fresh bread, a sizzling pan on the Aga and a glass of red in her hand, she was starting to feel a little more human, although she knew that so much of her life was still hidden. Deciding to make a list of all the things she had worked out so far to see if it jogged anything else awake, she found a pen and paper and sat at the old kitchen table.

Okay ... what did she know for a _fact?_ It seemed very important to her for some reason to list only things she knew to be _facts_ rather than speculation.

She looked at the hand holding the pen: she was left-handed, _fact_. She could paint, _fact_, although her painting style seemed to have changed radically from the work she had done before the accident.

She spoke educated French and English, _fact_, though she felt more comfortable using French. Did that make her French? Her hands were bare of rings, but there was a definite mark around her left ring-finger, suggesting she had worn one there until very recently. Had she been married? Engaged? There were no photos around the farmhouse of any man. Christine Allane had said she worked in Paris, that there were other bank accounts in Paris; perhaps there was a man in Paris too? She caught herself smiling ... _what if it wasn't a man?_

Turning her eyes back to the list, she realised she hadn't come very far. Okay, so what else? She was quite fit, despite her current injuries; she could see the evidence of her mirrors. Her body was well-toned, healthy and parts of her seemed surprisingly tough; her hands, for instance. She still had no idea why, but there was clearly a reason. Did she have a very physical hobby? Did she box? It was the closest she could come to an explanation without additional supporting evidence.

There was one other thing; one thing she had noticed after her last shower. Though her stomach and abdomen were taut and flat, there were a raft of small silver stretch-marks above her pelvis. She couldn't find any others like them anywhere else on her body except a few around her breasts. At some point then, she had been very big, much bigger than she was now, but only in the front. She had been pregnant, _very_ pregnant, at some point. Had there been a child? If so, where was it? How long ago? By the faintness of the marks, it had to be at least several years, but there were no photos of a child or children here either. Were they in Paris? Did she have an apartment there? A life there? Was _Narcisse_ a holiday home? Was that why everything felt so unfinished and empty? This was not where she lived?

Tipping the omelette onto a plate, she picked at it with a fork, her appetite suddenly gone. Were there people in Paris ... _or perhaps England_ ... who thought she was missing? _Dead?_ Was there a child or children who wondered where she was? The only person she knew who might be able to tell her was Christine Allane, but she would have left the office by this time. Did she have an address book anywhere? Probably not; it had most likely been on her phone which had disappeared along with everything else in the train. Still, there might be something in the office, some document or business card. She decided to investigate and then stopped as the thought crossed her mind. _Investigate?_ Why did that sound so familiar?

###

Raymond Caval, the civil servant who received the call from the _Sous-Préfet_ telling him to return to work, unlock the main office and wait there for the Sûreté, was not happy and picked at imagined fluff on his sleeve while he waited. It was practice-night and he was never late. He hoped that whatever it was the police wanted, they could get on with it and leave, _quickly_. The bells waited for no man and tonight he was supposed to be _Conducteur_, ready to try a new Method Ring. He could not possibly be _late_.

The sun was beginning its dip into evening as Sherlock and John stepped through the front entrance of the town administrative offices and looked around. Black-and-white tiled floors, a large, wooden-railed staircase occupying the centre of the foyer; gilt-framed paintings of previous senior administrators, pretty typical for the _petite bourgeoisie._

He turned to face the waiting public servant; overly-neat, mid-thirties, lived with his mother; problem with dandruff and ... a campanologist. Local bell-tower, obviously, probably the Catholic college across the park judging by the number of times the man had looked through the window at the place. He was edgy; definitely didn't want to be here. Sherlock smiled inwardly. He could use that to his advantage.

"This is likely to be a _very_ long and time-consuming job, so I'd like to thank you for your assistance before we begin," he smiled regally, noting the sudden drop of the man's expression. "If there were any way I could make this easier, I would, but I need to locate certain records which are bound to be very deeply hidden within the council archives."

The clerk of the préfecture was suddenly overwhelmingly keen to assist; anything to get them out of here within the hour ... Raymond realised he could still make practice if he skipped dinner and they were gone from here before seven. He faced Pohlest. "Tell me what you seek, Monsieur, and I will do my best to accommodate your investigations."

Charles Pohlest pointed at Sherlock and John and folded his arms.

"We are looking for any record of the Bertrand Amar's family and dwellings near the river somewhere in the vicinity of Vichy, probably back around the time of the last war," John read the request out from his notebook. "He bred ducks, apparently," he added, smiling helpfully.

Caval thought. Many of the old property records had been archived to _fiche_ and were, in turn, slowly being digitised, thus it might take hours poring through mouldering old boxes of ledgers; days, even. However ... there may be a simpler way. "One moment, Messieurs," he said, raising an index finger. "I think I may have a quicker alternative for you."

Meeting John's eye, Sherlock smile was fractionally smug as they watched the fussy little man wriggle his fingers as he entered a nearby office and booted up a large and slightly archaic computer.

"Most of our records, especially the older ones, are still in hard-copy form," Raymond focused his entire attention on the screen in front of him. "But what we have been very assiduous in moving to a safer format have been every last _acte authentique_ we have been able to find, including those of land-transactions, commercial and industrial properties," he paused, still peering at the screen, his fingers flying. "For the taxes, you see."

"Acte authentique?" John was curious.

"Bit like a deed of sale," Sherlock muttered distractedly as he watched the screen from behind the administrator's dandruff-flecked shoulder.

"I think I may have something for you, Monsieur," Caval swivelled the screen around so all three of the investigators could see.

Beside the blinking and highlighted family name of _AMAR_ were four individual entries of property sales, each one more than fifty years previous. There were two properties that seemed to fit the description of a farm and two ancillary properties which were nondescript in that they might have been anything.

"It appears the Amar family were fairly well-off before the war but fell on hard times immediately thereafter," Caval observed. "A not unusual occurrence in these parts."

"Ah yes," Pohlest nodded slowly. "Le _Zone Libre_."

"Turning to the two Britons with a print-out of the four properties, the clerk looked obliging. "Would you like to see the locations of these properties on the local map of the area?" he asked.

"That would be very helpful, yes, please, can we?" John was already walking towards the large-scale regional chart of Vichy and its surrounds.

"All the Amar properties, at least all the commercial ones we have on record, are along this stretch of the Allier," Raymond circled a finger in the Saint-Yorre area. "Two were on the left bank and two were on the right; they also had _droits de rempotage_ in the connecting stretch of river." Seeing the inquiring look on the blonde man's face, he smiled. "Potting rights," he said. "For _langoustine_."

"So we can assume that the farmhouse Madam Sollan was talking about belonging to Bertrand Amar was at this end of our search parameter," Sherlock tapped the paper and looked thoughtful. "Although it still leaves us both sides of the river to check, unless we can narrow it down still further," he smiled brightly and turned back to Raymond. "Any other ideas?"

"The two properties that were sold as farms with land and dwellings are located one on either side of the Allier, each nearly three kilometres north of the Saint-Yorre Bridge. On the western bank is the farm of _Jacinthe_ and on the eastern, there is _Narcisse_. Each of these farms had additional properties and small parcels of land which were sold separately and on individual deeds," Caval paused and looked up. "I do not have any more information, Messieurs," he said. "Does this help you at all?"

"We seek a farm that once used to be owned by Bertrand Amar," Sherlock was frowning. "Is that name on either of the _actes authentique_?"

The administrator looked closely but then shook his head. "The only name is the _paterfamilias_ of Amar," he said. "I am sorry."

"How long by car from here to Saint-Yorre?" John checked his watch. They needed to follow these leads tonight, especially if Sherlock was right about the danger associated with Cate being on her own right now. And Sherlock was almost always right about these things.

Charles Pohlest also looked at his watch. "If we take the Pont de Bellerive and drive down the Fernand Auberger, then we can probably reach _Jacinthe_ within thirty minutes or so," he paused. "And if you want to continue onto _Narcisse_, we'll need to carry on down to the Saint-Yorre bridge and then drive back up on the river road, which will take another half-an-hour, maybe a little longer."

"Do either of the farms have a listed phone number?" John asked. "Maybe we could try calling to see if anyone is there?"

"There is nothing of that on these documents, Messieurs," Caval shrugged.

"Then we should not wait," Sherlock took one last long stare at the large map before turning to the clerk who was surreptitiously checking his own watch. "Thank you, _Monsieur_," he said, offering his hand. "May the bells ring true for you this evening."

Heading swiftly to the entrance, John turned to see the dumbfounded expression on the clerk's face. "He does that," he smiled stepping through the door.

###

Ward-nurse Julienne Post was still a bundle of excitement when she returned to Cusset Hospital to begin her night-shift. Making sure she was early, she went directly up to the main Reception desk and leaned against it, her eyes wide with self-import.

In the process of finding her coat and collecting her stuff together to leave for the evening, the receptionist paused and waited. There was gossip to be had here for sure, and she was in no rush to leave before she garnered every little juicy morsel. "Well?" she looked expectant.

"The police are all over the place looking for the woman who left yesterday," Juli said, lowering her voice as was proper in these types of conversation, adding to the salacious feel of the discussion.

"And what did you tell them?" the receptionist was attentive in an unpleasant kind of way. The hospital had never lost a patient before; well, not like _that_.

"I spoke with the Sûreté and two British detectives," Post paused, hearing footsteps approach. It was only one of the ambulance drivers. "I told them everything I said to the missing woman, and everything that old Nance Sollan told her about the farm the woman remembered the name of."

"What farm was that, then?" the receptionist wanted every last detail to cement her position as a font of all knowledge in the morning.

"It was an old farm called _Narcisse_," Juli Post, stopped herself. "_Oh_," she realised. "I never told them the _name_ of the place," she stopped again, staring at the receptionist. "I should ring them back and tell them, shouldn't I?"

"I'll be heading off then," the driver threw an empty paper cup into a nearby bin. "No point waiting here any longer, but maybe I'll pop back in tomorrow; have a nice night, ladies," he smiled, waving a little as he headed towards the exit and his car. Now he knew where the woman had gone, a quick search on his phone and he even had the approximate address: _Rue de la Rivière_, Saint-Yorre.

Checking the destination against the Citroën's GPS, he saw that it would probably take him about half-an-hour to get there, maybe a little longer as it was going to start getting dark soon. Even though the police might be heading to the same place, he wasn't worried: he had the name of the place; they didn't. Besides, it would be too late for them to do much about anything after he'd been and gone.

Reaching into his pocket, his fingers touched the small white box. He smiled and turned the ignition-key of the ambulance.

###

His seat-belt unclipped the second the helicopter touched down on French soil, he had wrenched open the door and jumped down without waiting for the steps. Swinging down from the cockpit, the pilot nodded as he pulled off his flight-helmet; what were his instructions?

"Wait here, ready for a swift departure. I will return shortly with our next destination. At some point this evening we will pick up an injured passenger; please ensure all is in readiness. I will give you further instructions at that point."

Not waiting to see the man's nod of acquiescence, Mycroft was already yanking open the door of the waiting Mercedes.

"Take me to Nevers Sûreté, and ignore the speed-limits," he directed. "Get me there _fast_."

"_Sir_," the driver paused just long enough to see the British visitor grasp his seat-belt before he slammed down on the accelerator and was up through five gears before he had even left the confines of Fourchambault. Though the distance between the airport and the main police officer was only about four kilometers, there were several traffic lights, four roundabouts and one or two public crossings, but still the Mercedes slewed to a halt by the Sûreté offices in under five minutes.

Mycroft, phone at his ear, was out of the car and mounting the steps of the building before the engine had quietened. Sweeping into the main entrance, his stride lengthening as he saw the double-doors at the far end of the corridor open and recognised Gilles de Chabot.

Nodding a faint acknowledgement, he barely paused. "Where is Thibert?"

"We have him here, but he is silent and we will have to release him in the morning. We have only circumstantial evidence against him," the lieutenant noted the adamantine set of the Briton's jaw.

"I will get what we need," Mycroft suddenly slowed his headlong passage, coming to a full halt. Relaxing his shoulders, he took a measured, deep breath as he straightened his back. A strange look of tranquility caught his face. Spying a coatrack near the door, a little smile curved his mouth as he also spotted something he could use in his conversation with Thibert. "May I?" he pointed.

Frowning a little, de Chabot nodded nevertheless; if the younger brother was correct, the wellbeing of this man's wife was in the balance; he could hardly object to such an innocuous prop as a rolled-up umbrella. Besides, he would be observing the interview very carefully from behind the mirrored wall. There would be no violence on his watch.

Accompanying the elder Holmes to the interview rooms, de Chabot opened the door of Number Three and beckoned Moreau who had returned to question the doctor on the evidence of the witness-statements. The situation had not progressed as Thibert had simply refused to engage, remaining silent and inert.

Stepping inside, Mycroft stood, equally silent, his eyes taking in everything about the man seated at the table in front of him. He simply looked, but said nothing, just standing, observing.

Thibert lifted his head when the newcomer entered. There was something vaguely ... _familiar_ about the man who stood, looking at him. Something horribly, awfully familiar ... The doctor saw the poised bearing, the immaculate tailoring ... the umbrella.

_Holmes_. This was the man responsible for all the calamities of his family. _Holmes!_ Noel Thibert felt his heart leap in his chest as he finally faced the man who had ruined his life.

Mycroft still hadn't said a word, but maintained a steady observation of the doctor's face, noted the widening of the eyes, the slight paling of complexion as recognition took hold. Clearly the doctor knew him, although he could not say the same about the Frenchman.

"Doctor Thibert," Mycroft's voice was barely audible. "Where is my wife?"

His upper lip curling with abject loathing, Thibert looked as if her were about to spit on the floor. "Die and burn in hell," he glared up at the quiet Englishman.

Saying nothing, but with a thoughtful expression growing on his features, Mycroft first leaned on the furled black umbrella in his left hand, then lifted the tip up towards his face. He examined the steel ferrule with some attention, allowing a faint frown to appear between his eyes.

"You know where she is. We are aware of this fact," his words murmured like a soft breeze. "Tell me now and I will do what I may for you."

"Fuck you, you arrogant British bastard," Thibert started to rise from his seat just as Mycroft lifted the umbrella and slammed it down hard on the table between them. The noise echoed around the room like gunshot and in the room next door, Moreau half-stood, waiting for de Chabot's instruction.

"Let him be for a little longer," Gilles was intrigued. He wanted to see what was to come.

The interview room had fallen silent again as Thibert swallowed hard, his pulse racing at the shock of the noise and the unexpected violence of the gesture.

"Then tell me _why_," Mycroft slowly lifted the curved handle of the umbrella, but left the ferrule resting on the table, its long steel point aimed squarely at the Frenchman's heart.

"Go to hell," the doctor's voice was husky, his eyes glued to the pointed end of the umbrella; it mesmerised him like a snake.

"You _will_ tell me," Mycroft's voice grew impossibly soft, almost caressing, as he scraped the steel languidly across the top of the table; first one way, then slowly back to point once again at Thibert's center. But closer, this time. Much closer.

"The Englishman is going to kill him," Moreau watched the drama unfold with a horrified fascination. "He is going to stab Thibert to death right in front of us."

De Chabot shook his head. "I don't think so," he said. "Wait."

Just as Thibert seemed to be regaining his composure, Mycroft lifted the umbrella and slammed it back down to the table right under the Frenchman's nose, the vibration of the blow shaking the table itself and making the doctor jump back and bite his tongue in sudden fright.

"_Tell me now!_" Mycroft unleashed the full power of his voice, ruthless with command.

Utterly rattled, Thibert was unable to prevent the shout that broke free. "_You know why!_" he yelled without conscious volition as both his fists hit the table. "_You know why_, it was you, _you_ that put my wife's father _in that place_, _it was you_ who left him there to rot, who ruined him! It was you who broke my Madelaine's heart; it was you who killed her! _Damn you to the vilest deeps of hell, you bastard! You killed my wife!"_

Slumping down to the table, Thibert lifted both hands to hold his head. "You killed my Madelaine," he sobbed, uncaring now if he lived or died himself.

"Your wife died when her car veered over a precipice because the power-steering malfunctioned, and for no other reason," Mycroft held his voice low; the crystalline clarity of his speech etched syllables into shards of glass. "I did not kill her, she died in a tragic accident, but you are making a deliberate choice which I will not accept," he leaned closer, his words becoming whispers once more. "If you imagine your world is hell now, think of me as your own personal Antichrist. If my wife is lost to me through your actions, you will never see another day of peace in your life," he paused, stepped back. "Where is she?"

Too distraught to consider further resistance, Thibert wiped a hand across his face. "I had her taken to Cusset hospital, but she left of her own accord," he mumbled. "I don't know where she is now."

"You spoke with her after the crash," Mycroft took a deep breath. "She had lost her memory and yet she wanted to leave here," he said. "_Why?_"

"There was a place," the doctor wiped his eyes again and sat up straighter. "A place she remembered, although she didn't know exactly where it was. She said she wanted to go there."

"The name of this place?" Mycroft pulled out his Blackberry, waiting.

"_Narcisse_, somewhere near Vichy."

"Thank you, Doctor Thibert," Mycroft was already heading to the door when he stopped, turned. "I am very sorry to hear of your wife's death," he said quietly. "It is a terrible loss. You have my sympathies."

Closing the door behind him he speed-dialed Sherlock while checking the time on his Hunter. It had been fourteen minutes since the landing at Fourchambault.

"Cate may be at a place called _Narcisse_," Mycroft held his breath as Sherlock answered the phone. "Do you know it?"

"_Yes_," his brother's words were clear. "Heading there now; sending you the location."

As Sherlock's voice left his ear, a soft ping advised him a text had been received. Opening it, Mycroft saw that is did indeed contain a set of co-ordinates.

De Chabot and his sergeant were standing silently until he returned the phone to his inner pocket. "Well done, Monsieur Holmes," the lieutenant smiled bleakly. "We have our case."

"And with luck, I shall soon have my wife," he nodded to them both and strode back towards the exit and to Cate.

###

Unable to find anything resembling a telephone book or an address list, she slumped down on a seat in the kitchen, her arm aching. She needed to take another painkiller, but since she was still expecting another delivery, wanted to wait until that was done and over before she took anymore and they sent her to sleep again. Hopefully, Christine had managed to get her some decent pain-relief that wouldn't make her pass out every time she took one.

As if in answer to her thoughts, there was a series of solid knocks at the front entrance.

Sighing in relief, she headed down the long stone-floored passage and opened the glass-panelled door. A man stood there, a faint smile on his lips.

"Are you the man delivering from the pharmacy?" she asked. "What were you able to bring?"

"Nothing but the best, Madame," the ambulance driver's smile grew wider. This was going to be even easier than he'd thought.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

_An Unexpected Delivery – For Mycroft's Sake – We Go There – The Last Battle – Bandit Panda – Back On the Horse – The Gift of Paris._

#

#

Though the evening was deepening, it was by no means dark and she could easily see beyond the man standing in her doorway. The first thing she noticed over his shoulder was that instead of the medium-sized van which had brought the first delivery, the vehicle parked in front of the farmhouse was a small private ambulance. Why would an ambulance be needed to deliver a box of painkillers?

The man saw her gaze and followed it, chuckling when he realised what must be confusing the woman, the same one he'd brought down from Nevers only the previous afternoon and despite the terrible bruising, she was looking different now; _better_, somehow.

"I work part-time for the pharmacy and the rest of the time I drive people around between hospitals," he smiled. "I have some pain-relief for you, that's what you wanted, yes?"

"It is exactly what I wanted," she agreed, looking for the man's electronic pad for her signature. There was nothing in either of his hands. She looked into his face, a wrinkle of confusion between her eyes.

"Oh, sorry, yes," he smiled again, pulling a small white box from his pocket. "I nearly forgot. Here you are," he offered her the tiny container.

That it wasn't a commercial pack of analgesics with instructions on dosage seemed odd. Opening the package, all she could see was an even smaller plastic bag containing two white tablets. She would not be taking these, not without some knowledge of their contents. Closing the box back up, she met his gaze, shaking her head and smiling.

"There's clearly been some sort of mistake," she said, handing the tiny carton back. "I wanted a much larger supply than two tablets. I don't think two will last me quite long enough."

"I can bring you more out in the morning," the driver replaced the box in her fingers. "Take these tonight and I'll have more for you in the morning."

"Thank you, no," she smiled, handing the package back. "I'm not in that big a rush. I'll get myself some tomorrow. Thank you for coming all the way out here, but this is really not what I wanted at all. I'll pay for them if necessary, but I don't want them."

"But you clearly need them, Madame," the driver insisted. "Take these now and you'll feel much better very soon."

"No thank you," she felt her smile cool. "I think that will be everything for tonight, good evening," stepping back, she went to close the door in the face of the man's unwanted insistence, when to her astonishment, he followed her through, pushing into the hallway.

"I think you will take these _tonight_, _Madame_," he asserted, almost driving her backwards and a little off-balance. He reached out to grab her shoulder.

Bracing herself against the wall with her left hand, the spike of shock sent a pulse of adrenaline through her entire body and she felt herself come alive in the oddest of ways, as if everything had suddenly switched to a higher plane of responsiveness, as if she were floating, barely able to keep herself connected to the ground. Her mind flashed suddenly with myriad fleeting images ... faces, voices ... _childrens voices_...

In an instant, she had dodged beneath his outstretched hand and, despite the sudden sharp pang of her cracked ribs; she flew through the back of the house. She couldn't remember if the office had a working lock on it, but it was her first idea at this stage.

Her unexpected sprint took the driver off-guard; he hesitated for a moment before deciding to give chase.

In seconds, she had reached the office, registered there was no serviceable locking mechanism on the door, and continued her dash into the last room in this part of the house; the studio. Running down the length of the room, she paused at one of the windows sliding open the old sash-cord mechanism. Grabbing a plastic container from a shelf, she scrabbled under the end of the solid central table, ducking down behind the narrower of its ends and hiding behind the thick wooden legs. She silenced her breathing. If he couldn't find her, maybe he might think she'd gone in a different direction.

"I know you're in here, _Madame_," the man laughed softly as his quiet footsteps strayed carefully through the door. "Everyone has seen the film where the false trail is laid by opening a window, and I am not so stupid as to think you are yet able to climb through such a small window so fast with only one arm," he paused, looking around the room. "I know you're in here," he said again, playfully. "Where _are_ you?"

Covering her mouth with her good hand, she forced herself to remain utterly silent and still. The intruder was correct in one thing; she was hampered by her right arm and could not hope to win any form of physical struggle. Her only option was to hide and wait. Perhaps he would give up and leave, allowing her to call the police.

She had no idea what else she could do.

###

Charles Pohlest's silver Renault was already well on its way down the _Route d'Hauterive_ towards _Jacinthe_, when Sherlock's phone rang.

"Cate may be at a place called _Narcisse_," his brother's voice was urgent. "Do you know it?"

"_Yes_," Sherlock turned to Pohlest. "_Narcisse_, _hurry_," he said, returning to the phone. "Heading there now; sending you the location," he rapidly texted the memorised co-ordinates as the Sûreté detective switched on the car's siren and floored the accelerator.

"There are no bridges before Saint-Yorre," Pohlest declared, navigating between a suddenly slowing BMW and a long-bed truck carrying steel pipes. "To reach _Narcisse_, we have to use the Saint-Yorre crossing and then go up the _Rue de la Riviere_ until we reach the bend in the Allier," the Frenchman's attention was now focused on a yellow Mazda which seemed unable to leave second-gear. "_Get out of the way!_" he shouted at the driver, hand flat against the Renault's horn as he overtook on the inside lane.

"How long before we can get there?" in the back of the car, John was hanging on for dear life.

"Ten minutes," Pohlest gunned the accelerator again; his face a mask of concentration as the car wove and dodged between the relatively scant traffic on this quiet French road. "Maybe less if we get a clear run from the bridge."

Sherlock felt his hands clench. _Let Cate be safe_. _For Mycroft's sake_.

###

"_Airport!_" Mycroft had barely grasped the seatbelt when the Mercedes erupted away from the kerb, its five-litre engine screaming at the driver pushed the performance vehicle to its limits.

The growing darkness of the early evening sky grew suddenly much darker as they left the town lights behind them, roaring along the road to Fourchambault, ignoring traffic signs and speed limits as if they were old Christmas decorations. The last roundabout before the airport turn-off didn't even exist as the powerful car simply shot straight across the paved top, levelling like an arrow until it screeched to a juddering sideways stop next to the PUMA.

"My thanks!" Mycroft leaped from the car and had the co-ordinates on the screen of his Blackberry and under the pilot's nose in a second. "We go there," he directed. "_Now_."

###

The man's slow footsteps echoed as he made his way down the length of the long room; there were not many places anyone could hide here. He would find her in a few moments and then he would have a little fun.

Feeling him coming closer by the vibration of his steps on the wooden boards, she realised there was no chance she could stay hidden much longer. Better to reveal herself by choice than be dragged out like an animal.

Taking a deep breath, she slid out from behind the table end and stood, backing away from him as he turned to face her, a disagreeable smile growing on his face.

"What do you want?" she asked, backing away even more as he turned his steps in her direction. "I have no money here, I don't even have a computer," she kept watching his eyes ... for some reason she felt it was important to watch the man's eyes.

"I am not here for money or computers, _Madame_," his smile became mocking. "Nor am I after your virtue," he almost giggled. "But there _is_ something you can do for me," he paused, standing clear of the table, staring at her.

It was as if all the clocks in the world had stopped; she stood, just a handful of meters away from the man, and she knew, in that second, without any doubt, that he was here to kill her _and she had no idea why_. The bright clarity of the moment felt like a shining light inside her head, as the grey swirls of cloud were sliced apart, and she saw ... and she remembered ... and she knew what she could do...

"Then do what you have come for," she stood straighter, rising slowly on her toes, as if to run again.

But there would be no more running.

His smile growing wider by increments, the driver stepped towards her, a slight swagger in his movements as he realised she had given up trying to run away. She was making this too easy for him. He laughed, not more than two meters from her, lifting his hand, he beckoned. "Come and take your medicine," he grinned, holding out the small white box.

One-and-a-half meters. _One meter_. The package resting on his open palm was in her reach.

_As was_ _he_.

With a jerk, she threw the contents of the now-opened plastic container into his face and a choking cloud of dark blue pigment filled his eyes and his grinning mouth. For a second he couldn't breathe, couldn't move at the shock of the unexpected attack, his fingers clawing at the skin of his face, at his eyes, as he howled, enraged by such perfidy.

In the moment the man looked away from her, intent only upon restoring his sight, she pivoted nimbly up on the ball of her right foot and slashed her left out and down in a low sweeping curve, catching the temporarily-blinded man on the side of his ankles, the force and speed of the blow entirely sufficient to heave him off-balance.

He went down to the hard boards with a gratifyingly hard _thump_. A foot, flat and hard to his solar-plexus drove the wind from his lungs; the man's frantic wheezing suggesting he wasn't going to be a problem for the next few minutes.

Running out of the room, she reached for the phone in the office, only to be distracted by the sound of the front-door being opened.

_Jesus Christ_ ... there was _another_ of them? _What did these people want from her?_

Dropping the phone, she dashed back into the studio; perhaps she could make it through the window this time, only to see the driver already up onto his knees, his face livid with anger and blue paint as he struggled to his feet.

"_I will kill you with my bare hands, you bitch!_" he shouted, staggering in her direction. She reached out across the table and grabbed a half-empty bottle of linseed oil, something, anything to throw at him if she had to.

As he came almost within grabbing distance, instead of sweeping his legs this time, she backed close inside his reach, an elbow jabbing sharply beneath his ribs as he snatched at her right arm. A striking jolt of white-hot pain almost had her fainting but there was sufficient momentum left to bring up the back of her left fist and strike the man hard under the oesophagus.

He choked, unable to catch his breath nor yet able to draw it into his lungs, staggering back against the table, gasping and gulping for air; all other thoughts gone as he struggled dreadfully to breathe.

But she was done. The white-hot agony of her injured arm and shoulder was now such that each breath had knives in it, she sobbed for breath as she crumpled to the floor and tried to curl into a ball. Maybe if it hurt enough, she would pass out and would know nothing of whatever was going to happen next.

There was the sound of multiple footfalls entering the room. She heard shouting and the sound of a scuffle, running footsteps and more shouting as a strong form dropped down onto the floor beside her. She felt herself carefully and gently rolled into an embrace that held her from the floor, resting against a strong chest and arm.

"Hello, Cate," the voice came from above her head, low and uncertain.

It was a voice she hadn't heard before and yet it was instantly recognisable. It reached deep inside her fog of memory and swirled up a turmoil of half-seen images that made little sense. She felt herself go dizzy with it, eyes blurring even more and her body falling numb with the shock.

The bottle of oil slipped from her nerveless fingers to the floor where it flowed unchecked, mixing with the dusting of blue power. She turned to see him as best she could, her heart racing, her throat as dry as the dusty floor.

A tall man knelt beside her; thin, with dark, dishevelled curls. His skin was pale but it was his eyes that drew her. An intense blue-grey gaze which reached into her mind and laid it open. It left her with an odd physical sensation as if bits of her were peeling away like roof tiles in a high wind. A stranger was holding her in his arms and yet she felt no panic. If anything, she felt the opposite.

"Who are you?" she husked, her throat as dry as the powder on the floor. "I don't know you but I know your voice. How can I know your voice?" she paused. "Why do you call me Cate?"

The man's face tightened with first a frown and then a narrowing of his eyes. He looked at her assessingly. "Cate is your name," he said, his voice softening, not moving from the doorway. "Catherine Adin-Holmes, British citizen," his stare was almost palpable.

She blinked wearily. "You have that wrong, Monsieur," she swallowed to ease her throat, trying to turn a little further, stopping as the pain rose again and the room spun. "I am Tallis Varon and I am French. I live here," she flicked her eyes to the room around her.

"You are Cate Holmes and you were in a train accident outside Nevers several days ago," the tall man nodded at the slender white lattice that held her right arm. "You are hurt; a comminuted fracture of the right ulna requiring surgery; dislocation of the right shoulder, at least three compression fractures of your right ribs," he paused, tilting his head slightly and stepping forward as he continued to appraise her. "Likely complications to the right lung and severe bruising to the face, throat and sternum," he lifted his steely gaze to her face, his eyes flickering from one side to the other. "Broken nose and possible hairline fracture to the right zygomatic field," his voice was almost a caress. "Concussion, undoubtedly and _also_..." his voice faded to nothingness. "Trauma-induced amnesia," he fell silent. "You were badly hurt, Cate, but you're going to be fine."

A wave of familiarity swept through her at his _voice_, his _words_. _She knew him_. But how did she know him?

"How do I know you?" she felt as if she were falling from a very great height. Her dizziness increasing almost to the point of faintness as the clouds swirled inside her head. "Who are you? I know you, but _how_?"

He held her closer, close enough for her to catch a faint air of his cologne; a subtle fragrance, expensive.

"Remember me, Cate," she was relaxed enough to let him touch her now, and he did, lifting the hair away from her eyes; delicate fingertips to her forehead, to the dip of her hairline where purple bruises peppered her skin. "_Remember me_," his voice was deep and hypnotic and she felt herself relaxing ... drifting...

That voice. His _voice_. She knew his voice. It reminded her ... of another. So similar, so much the same and so different. _Why was it so hard to remember?_

She stared up into those unknown but entirely familiar eyes and felt herself lost in their nearness. The grey fog spun in violent eddies and she felt herself sway forward in slow-motion as the vertigo finally overcame her control. She was falling, falling down into a whirling darkness.

The man's arms held her closer as she rested her head against him, his arms positioned carefully to avoid undue pressure on her right side.

"Stay still, Cate," his voice was still soft, but with a note of urgency. "John's here too, I'll go and get him and ..."

"_John?_" her head was swimming and fuzzy; flashing images of peoples and places; voices. The voices of children … she had difficulty shaping the words in French. She tried it in English. "John's here?"

"_Yes_," she felt the man's arms tighten around her fractionally as she spoke in English for the first time, his deep voice vibrating next to her ear. "You remember John; nice chap, short, army doctor, drinks tea. John's here and I'll go and get him for you..."

"Don't leave..." she whispered, her eyes closing as the fog whirled, _thinned_, as his voice connected to a _name_. "Stay with me Sherlock, don't leave me alone, please, I can't be alone now, _please_..." her words ended in a moan.

"I'll stay," he whispered softly. "I won't leave you," she felt his arms tighten in a reassuring fashion. There was a faint sound of a door banging open in the distance. _More_ _voices_. Voices she _knew_.

Urgent footsteps moved swiftly through the building, growing louder until they halted abruptly at the threshold of the studio. There was a high-pitched stifled groan of someone trying hard not to make a much louder sound.

"She's very upset," he warned, the reverberation of Sherlock's words sensed in her bones as much as heard. But he wasn't speaking to her; there was someone else in the room with them. John?

Sherlock's arms loosened slightly, even as her fingers moved to hold him close. "Don't go," she whispered.

"I leave you in safe hands," Cate heard the smile in his voice as he leaned back to move away.

There was barely time to register the approaching footsteps before another body, another strong male form of incredible comfort and familiarity, threw himself down beside her on the paint-stained floor, sweeping her into an all-encompassing embrace that made her ribs protest.

Held intimately close, she felt the man shake as his ragged breathing battled with sounds that might have been laughter or weeping, his arms an unmistakable shelter, his hands enfolding her like a child. He held her as something fragile, pressing senseless inarticulate murmurs into her hair.

No words had yet been spoken and all she could do was drift in the intensity of the moment, in the sensation of his arms around her, a hand supporting her head like a baby, his fingers piercing the veil of her hair.

Turning her head fractionally, she managed to see his face, his mouth ... his eyes.

_The bluest of eyes_. Eyes that she knew as well as her own.

The fingers of her left hand rose hesitantly to stroke his cheek, leaving a smudge of oily blue paint. "I know you," she whispered. "How can I know you?"

"Your poor face," the blue eyes scanned her features, her pain reflected in his expression. "Hush now, don't try to move or say anything; there's a stretcher coming and we'll be home very shortly. Just lay still, Cate my love, lie still."

Overwhelmed by the knowledge that she was safe, that she was _found_, tears she had been unable to shed came now as she cried within the fortress of his embrace. All the fear and loneliness and anxiety of the last several days brimmed over and she wept in the arms of a man she almost remembered.

The fog in her head swirled its last, giving up one final name. "_Mycroft_."

"_My love, my love_," his voice cracked. "I have you now," his arms enclosed her marginally tighter as his face rested in her hair. "It's all over now, everything's going to be alright."

"The children?"

"Are fine and are looking after Nora as we speak," his voice was all over the place as it attempted to find an appropriate emotion. "They will be waiting for you."

"I didn't know who I was ..." Cate closed her eyes and felt the hot sting of tears rise again. "I thought I was alone."

"_Catie_," Mycroft groaned, easing her closer to his chest. "It's all right now, darling, hush now and rest."

The PUMA's two flight-crew were waiting to put her into the reinforced steel-cradled stretcher before she could be safely loaded into the 'copter for transit.

"She's in great pain," Mycroft stared up at them. "I don't want it to get any worse for her before she gets to hospital. What can you give her?"

Kneeling down beside them both, the man in the yellow flight-suit flipped open the medical box and unlocked a small section which folded out to reveal two rows of small plastic ampules and the same number of elongated silver packets.

"I have morphine or fentanyl," he said. "Given her size and condition, I recommend the fentanyl," he nodded, reaching for a silver packet.

There was the sound of running footsteps.

"_Oh, Christ_," John was breathless as he came to a halt beside the little group, but knelt all the same. "Hospital here or London?" he asked.

"I don't need to go to hospital," Cate felt exhausted and in pain, but she wasn't dying. She was still slightly high from the rush of returning memory. "Give me something for this bloody arm and I'll be fine. I don't want to go to any hospital."

Looking between the two doctors, Mycroft's expression was rueful but pragmatic. "London, I think," he raised an eyebrow.

Opening the packet, the flight-medic extracted a small white lozenge on a stick. "Just put this inside your cheek and let it dissolve," he smiled at Cate's woebegone face. "I promise the pain will start to go in five minutes or less."

Unbuckling the several straps across the wheeled stretcher, the medics reached down to lift her only to stop when they met Mycroft's glare. "_I'll do it_," he growled, finding better purchase beneath her body and Cate felt herself being gently and carefully lifted into the cushioned container. The safety straps were replaced and she had a vague realisation of being moved through the house.

"Turn the lights out and put the front door key under the doormat," she croaked, closing her eyes and allowing herself to float as the pain-relief kicked in.

Even configured as a medivac transport, the Eurocopter was easily large enough for the small group.

Charles Pohlest was to remain in Saint-Yorre until daylight enabled a search of the river for a suspected drowning victim.

"As soon as he saw us come through the door of the studio, he went out the window," John shook his head as he spoke quietly with his flatmate. "He was obviously in the process of attacking Cate, but we still have no clue why," he added. "After I followed him out the window and Pohlest came around from the front, the guy took off and headed into the garden. I don't think he realised the river was so close, but he was in it before we had any chance to stop him," John shrugged. "He was already around the bend of the river before either of us could get close enough to think about pulling him out."

"Then for his sake, I hope he's dead," Sherlock mused, his gaze turning towards Mycroft who was seated on the opposite side of the cabin holding his wife's hand, his forearms resting against the aluminium rail of the stretcher. "I would not wish to be alive and in his shoes when my brother recovers his faculties."

"But you've got an idea, don't you?" John watched the elder Holmes touch delicate fingertips to Cate's cheek. "You already know what happened."

"I am of the belief that Cate's attacker was an agent sent by Thibert," he said. "The doctor was the only one in all this who might have the slightest desire to have her permanently silenced," he paused. "And my brother believes it too," he added, sagely. "I don't think Thibert will be practicing medicine anymore," he paused again. "Scalpels aren't the kind of knives they use where he's going."

###

The private hospital in Kensington was discreet and low-key. Cate lay back in the unusually-wide hospital bed and fretted. She had been here two days because Mycroft had made it perfectly clear she could not be anywhere else; it was simply not a topic up for discussion or negotiation.

"When you add an MD to your PhD, I shall be sure to accord your prognoses their appropriate merit," he said, wide-eyed and straight-faced as he stared her down.

Upon offering the opinion that she was perfectly well enough to recover at home, he had smiled brightly, kissed her tenderly and taken a seat in a comfortable armchair from which vantage-point he had simply observed every one of the x-rays and tests and scans and talks with various therapists, saying little but absorbing everything.

Every time she had looked at him and frowned, he raised his eyebrows and smiled. When all the medical staff had left, Mycroft sat on the edge of her bed and lifted Cate's good hand to his lips. "I will not risk you again so soon," he said, quietly. The look in his eyes was much more eloquent. She shut up.

But today, she had been left pretty much to herself. Her pain was being properly managed and she really was feeling a great deal better, although she still looked something of a fright. She had been allowed to shower and a hairdresser had come in and done her hair properly for the first time since the accident; it was impossible to style hair with only one hand. And so she felt fresh, relaxed and pain-free when Mycroft returned.

"You're feeling better," his eyes noticed everything about her in a single glance.

"I am," Cate agreed. "May I come home now?"

"Not just yet," he smiled. "I've brought visitors for you."

Her heart leaped. _Visitors_. After speaking with her sister and then Nora on the phone, there were only two she really needed to see.

Walking back to the door, he pulled it open to let Nora usher the twins through.

"_Mummy!_" two identical squeals raced towards the bed before Mycroft caught them.

"Mummy is poorly and you have to be very gentle," he spoke softly, crouched down on the floor, looking into their eyes. Immediately they nodded, turning to stare at Cate's bruised face.

"Don't I get any cuddles from my favourite children?" Cate felt her voice go wobbly. It had barely been a week since she had seen them but it felt far longer.

Resting both her hands on the edge of the bed, Blythe looked up and raised her eyebrows. "Mummy, we're the _only_ children you have; of course we're your favourite," she said, sounding uncannily like Sherlock.

"Then don't I get a cuddle from my favourite _only_ children?" she was well-versed in Holmes-speak.

Mycroft lifted them both up onto the bed, one on either side, as Cate hugged them to her. They carefully wriggled close.

"Why do you look like a panda, mummy?" Julius was staring at the bruising around her eyes. "Will you always look like a panda?"

"Mummy's not a panda, _silly_," Blythe also looked intently at Cate's face. "Mummy's a bandit."

"I might be a bandit panda for all you know," she prodded each of them gently, eliciting giggles.

"Or a _pandit_," Jules kneeled up on the bed and clapped his hands together, an expression of delighted cleverness on his face.

Cate looked at Mycroft then turned back to look at her son. "Do you know what that word means?" she asked, carefully, watching to make sure he didn't fall off the bed.

"It means _teacher_," Jules paused, looking at his parents in surprise at the question. "Doesn't it?" he asked, warily, his eyebrows raised.

"And do you know where it comes from, Jules?" Mycroft gazed down at the almost-four-year-old.

Nodding solemnly, Jules lifted up two small fingers. "The first place it comes from is called Kashmir," he said, "though I don't know where that is."

"And what's the second place?" Cate was fascinated by his serious expression. "Where else does it come from?"

"Uncle _Sherlock_," Jules giggled again, hurling himself face down onto the bed, chortling into the bedcovers.

Shaking her head, Cate stroked the dark wavy hair that seemed to grow faster than he did. Her children were nearly four, going on fourteen. It was a little breathtaking.

It also crystallised an idea that had been ticking around in her brain for the last two endless days.

She raised her eyes to Mycroft standing by the bed, and nodded thoughtfully.

He frowned and sighed.

_She was planning again_.

###

"You really don't have to do this, you know," Cate placed a warm palm against his smoothly-shaven face. "I _must_, but I don't want you to feel compelled to do anything you'd rather not."

Linking her fingers through his own, Mycroft kissed each individual fingertip and smiled faintly. "As if I'd let you out of my sight in France again," he muttered. "But then I always knew there was a certain madness in your family when you married me," his expression belied his words. He did not appear overly concerned.

They were standing at one of the main departure platforms of Paris' _Gare de Lyon_, right beside the sleek silver shape of a high-speed TGV train. It was exactly six weeks to the day that she had boarded an identical train with her friend, and she was about to do it again.

"Darling, you know why I have to do this," Cate looked at the steel beast growling beside her in engineered readiness. "If I don't get back on the horse now ..."

"And I understand completely," he nodded, feeling his other hand being tugged excitedly and gazed down at Blythe who was waiting with meagre patience. "Which is why we're all going with you."

"Can we get on _now_, daddy?" Jules was dancing with enthusiasm. It was the first time he could remember anything as _special_ as this, and they'd already been in a _airyplane _and both he and Bly had worn the pilot's hat, and now they were all going on a _magic_ train. He was increasingly anxious his parents were about to change their mind.

Blythe wanted to read the fat new comic that was rolled up in mummy's bag. It was in French, but that didn't matter. She was fairly sure she could speak French.

The station speakers advised all passengers to take their seats as the train was due to depart momentarily and without another word, the family Holmes walked into their _Premier compartment_.

It was an uneventful journey until they reached Château-Landon, the exact spot where the other train had _shivered_, and Cate did too, a chill feeling of breathlessness clutching at her chest, until she felt her hands gently grasped by long, warm fingers and her attention drawn from the countryside that flashed passed the window, to her husband's solicitous face. She nodded in response to his unspoken question and smiled, letting a slow sigh ease from her body. _Back on the horse_.

They reached Nevers minutes later where a dark burgundy BMW awaited their pleasure. It seemed only moments after that, that Cate left the car with a previously arranged bouquet of flowers to speak with a slight, middle-aged woman at the gates of an insignificant cemetery. They spoke for a few moments before the woman took Cate's hand and they walked together into the walled garden to pay respects to Nance Sollan; Cate's savior and the woman's mother.

Waiting for Cate, Mycroft let the twins out of the car to stretch their legs in the small grassy clearing that served as a car park and they passed the time learning how to pronounce the signposts on the road.

Cate returned, smiling. "Well, _that's_ over," she sighed. "I gave her the money, though she didn't want to take it," she shrugged. "Perhaps she'll give it to someone else who needs a little help."

"My love," Mycroft wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. "I'm sure she'll put it to good use."

"Shall we all go to Paris and collect our presents?" Cate held out her hands for the twins, the recent surgery on her arm an already-fading pink line.

"We get presents?" Jules' eyes grew round. It was like Christmas all over again. A _airyplane_, a magic ride on a train and now _presents_. He grinned.

"Only if you can say it in French," Blythe decided to instigate a new and entirely unilateral rule. She knew she was smarter than her brother and felt he was receiving far too many benefits because of the unfortunate disadvantage he had of being a boy.

"There will be presents for everyone," Cate laughed, pulling them back towards the car and the return train to Paris and to the rest of her life.

#

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# **Almost the end** #

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They had rebooked the suite at the _George Cinq_, with the sunken bath and the voluptuous appointments. Jules immediately commandeered the empty tub to play at being the navigator of a battleship, while Blythe found a deep armchair where she made a nest for herself with several cushions and a thick pile of French comics and _bandes dessinées_. She liked the silly things the characters did and soon there was a quiet stream of _zut_ _alors_ interspersed with giggles.

"My children are being exceptionally well-behaved," Cate listened to her son's call to abandon ship after what had clearly been a pyrrhic engagement with hostile forces. "I can't actually remember them being like this before."

"They never were," Mycroft murmured as he slid both arms around her middle, his mouth finding the sweet place behind her ear. "Only my half were ever this good."

"Meaning my half were hardened scamps, I suppose?" she smiled against his throat as he pulled her closer.

"And what present do you have for me?" his lips were on her skin.

"As if you didn't know," Cate groaned softly as a wave of heat rippled down her body.

"Then when do I get to unwrap it?" Mycroft flicked open a single button of her blouse, sliding his fingers inside and across the prominence of her bones. He pushed a kiss under her jaw, persuasively appreciative.

"When my two good children are fast asleep and unlikely to interrupt the festivities," she laughed, arching against him, feeling his fingers tense and become suddenly warm.

"You remember that I'm still madly in love with you," don't you?" he dipped a hand into his pocket and displayed a small red box. He opened it.

A majestic deep-blue sapphire ring awaited her approval. There was microscopic engraving on the inside.

"What does it say?" she asked, curious.

"This belongs to Mycroft Holmes," he grinned against her, not mentioning the equally microscopic electronic chip embedded now beneath the stone. Inactive. _For the moment_.

"I love you," he groaned, pulling her tightly against him. "Let me give you Paris."

"I don't need Paris," she laughed again, her arms reaching up around his neck. "I have everything I shall ever want."

"You never let me buy you anything," he said, taking her mouth in a kiss beyond price.

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**THE END**

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A colossal _thank you_ to everyone who has read, enjoyed and reviewed this story.

Your appreciation is quite lovely.

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After being overwhelmed with requests for more Cate and Mycroft, there will be a

**NEW STORY COMING SOON … Ne Plus Ultra, Mycroft Holmes**

A romance. Whitehall wolves, witchcraft, Black Widows and The Bank of England.

A Cate and Mycroft story


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